A Dream Of Peace
by AKS4428
Summary: Naruto awakens the rinnegan and Naruto and Sasuke are descendents of great kings of the past. A war heads their way in their coming future, how will this turn out to be? Will Naruto succumb to the darkness due to his past or will he be saved by his friends? Find out in this series
1. Chapter 1: History

Alright guys this my first fanfic so I am going to do a Naruto x Hinata fanfic. I know there's a lot of other fanfics out there but I still wanted to do one now, and this is going to be different so I am going ahead with the plan and I did this so forgive me.

Since this is my first fanfic go easy on the flame's guys…. though criticism and suggestions on how it should be done is appreciated. Oh! And this is going to be a harem story with Hinata being the alpha female and Naruto's first….um everything, so that's that. And the romance of the story doesn't actually begin until just before the Chunin exams so that will be around 17-18 long chapters so all of u are going to have to wait. As for all the perverts like me out there all of u guys are goanna have to wait until the Shippuden arc starts.

I've already done most of the writing so I will update really soon mostly almost like every day, so get ready and there won't much story changes almost half way till the Sasuke retrieval arc though ideas will still be appreciated from everyone. Oh! And the stories keep getting longer every chapter So, let's get on to the story now.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE NARUTO UNIVERSE!!!!

A DREAM OF PEACE

Chapter-1: History

A long long time ago way before the shinobi era Demons, and humans used to coexist the difference between demons and monsters were that, 'Demons were beings of untold malice and created from its own anger and hatred feeling no remorse for casting out their sanity. Monsters on the other hand were beings created by the hatred and malice of others but still keep/maintain their sanity or they can be born from other monsters.

This is the same case for a demon, but if demons were to fall in love with humans and were to have a child, that child would be a half demon, whereas if monsters on the other hand were to mate with a human then the child would either be a pure monster or a human with some of the monster's characteristics.

Now during this time humans were pitifully weak and couldn't do anything so they were mostly ignored by the other two races. The world at this time was ruled by 3 of the strongest, and by strongest, I mean they were kings and queen. They were **Juubi:** the demon queen. The most powerful of all the other demons. **THE** **GUARDIAN** **WEREWOLF**: the eternal living werewolf 'Beast'. He is the guardian of the werewolf clan. Being the strongest he took the role of a guardian to protect his people. **VLAD…. VLAD THE IMPALER**: as the name suggests he's ruthless. The leader of the Vampire clan. His name itself struck fear in the heats of demons, humans and monsters alike.

Now all these three were evenly matched, with neither of them being stronger than the other. Now, this balance of power remained for a long time until Vlad…. was dying, dying of thirst for blood.

It was said that when Vlad was once amongst the humans, he met the most beautiful woman he's ever laid eyes on, so he followed her and tried to make her his…. a vampire but she was a specimen like he had never ever seen before in his lifetime, and he had lived for a long time. Rather than getting scared and cowering at his feet or launching herself at him in a failed attempt to kill him, she was…. calm, very. She said to him that 'If he wanted to make her his then he would have to prove it to her, not by the strength of his body but by the strength of his heart'.

Never had he met another woman in his life wo denied him what he wanted. And what he wanted he got. Vlad would have taken her against her will if need be, but those eyes of hers held a resolute gaze, a look of pain, compassion, love, and commanding, but he didn't see a single glint of hatred or fear of who or what he was, and so he complied. He proved his worth to her, like a small boy trying to gain the acknowledgement of his parents and elders. And soon he fell for her, not out of lust or anything else that mattered but for her pure heart and the way it touched his in many ways he never imagined possible.

He knew that she was the one and so they had a child, but this child was pure human, and she had taken her mother's life as she gave him his during childbirth. This broke Vlad 's heart to no extent but he couldn't leave his daughter alone so he raised her till she was big enough to handle herself and let her go. Vlad had vowed to never touch human blood again after his wife's death and that was how he was in this predicament today.

Vlad eventually grew weaker and weaker till one final day he died. The whole world was in mourning due to the death of one of their great kings, but some of the monsters who saw the sudden shift in power to their side started a revolt to overthrow 'Beast' and 'Juubi' and kill all surviving members of the vampire clan and the werewolf clan ensuring that they held absolute power.

The demons were able to slaughter the vampire clan completely out of existence due to the lack of their leader, almost erase all the members of the werewolf clan and was able to completely catch Juubi off guard sending her and her nine most loyal subjects into hiding as some demon prick ruled everyone.

But their victory was not long lasted as the humans grew in sheer number and their princess Kaguya Otsutsuki ate the fruit which gave humans the ability to use chakra. Using this new found power the humans were able to overthrow the demons and push them back into a whole new dimension leaving the world in peace with Kaguya (who thanks to the fruit was a being with infinite chakra), Juubi and her nine loyal subjects who were in hiding, the last few surviving members of the werewolf clan, and 'Beast' who had gone into an exile saying that he will return when the true heir of the werewolf clan is born and that he will bestow great power and responsibility upon him.


	2. Chapter 2: A Sage's Dream

Chapter-2: A sage's dream

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.

So Kaguya wanted to have kids even though she was the strongest human (Kind of a lady thing you know). So, she found a male who she thought was worthy enough to be her husband and the father of her children and did the deed. But she was blessed because she didn't get one but two kids and decided to name them Hagoromo and Hamura Otsutsuki they inherited the same kind of chakra that she had but Hagoromo inherited his mother's Rinnegan and had brown hairs but his brother Hamura had inherited his mother's Byakugan and her straight white hair.

Both were prodigies from a very young age being very calm and collected at all times, but Hamura was different since unlike his twin brother he was very very stoic and acted like he had a stick up his ass (guess where the Hyuga's stuck up attitude comes from). Now these two was born at a time of endless war between humans and so the brothers desired peace in this world. These two were completely oblivious to the treacherous acts of their mother.

Now Kaguya would bring in the prisoners and other few other people from her country and would send them into the temple for worship…... or that's what she said. In reality Kaguya would bring them in and use them as sacrifices to increase her power, but since KARMA IS A BITCH!! She decided to fuck with Kaguya's plans. The brothers had fallen in love. Hamura had fallen in love with a normal woman and from that love they had a child (which not even Hagoromo knew of), whereas Hagoromo had fallen in love with a woman who was almost seven years older than him, and he could care less about her age since she was the one for him. But little did he know that her father was Vlad.

Now both the brothers used to see hundreds of people going to the temple to serve but had never seen even one of them return which caused a lot of suspicion among the brothers so, they snooped around and found out what was actually going on in the temple an went against their mother to put an end to her tyranny. A huge battle had broken out in between the mother and her sons. Kaguya was so power drunk that she even ended up killing Hamura who died protecting Hagoromo from one of her attacks. This caused Hagoromo to unlock his mangyeko sharingan.

Meanwhile Juubi was passing by the duelling mother and son along with her subjects and saw them fighting. Juubi was angry at her for killing most of her race and trapping them totally in another dimension so she charged her when she caught Hagoromo off guard and devoured her which ended up in Juubi absorbing her power and life force, and in turn Juubi became a being of infinite chakra and yokui. Just as Hagoromo was about to thank her for helping him defeat his mother she. went. berserk and tried killing him. Hagoromo was able to out think her since she went berserk and ended up sealing Juubi inside of him. He used a seal which allowed him to harness and use her power in the future if need be, and hence became the first Jinchuriki of Juubi no Ookami.

\--Time skip a few years later--

Hagoromo had married Katsumi (Vlad's daughter and his love) and had two children with her. The eldest one was Indra and the younger one was Ashura. Katsumi died after giving birth to Ashura leaving her two children with Hagoromo. Hagoromo was the first one to explain about chakra and its uses to the world bringing forth the era of shinobi's. Hagoromo had travelled the world with his sons spreading his ideas and religion called ninshū hence earning him his name 'The saviour of the world'.

Though everything was going well for Hagoromo (a.k.a. the sage of six paths) he knew that his dream of peace could not be achieved in his lifetime so he decided to choose his successor. Indra the eldest son inherited his father's eyes 'the sharingan' was a prodigy from birth and overcame every obstacle with ease. While his youngest son Ashura had inherited his father's physical prowess and his life force and had absolutely no talent and had to overcome every obstacle with pure determination and hard work and made a lot of friends and companions along the way, and hence he knew the struggles of life.

Hagoromo knew that peace could only be attained by creating bonds and strengthening them, so on this basis he had selected Ashura to be his successor. Indra couldn't accept this since he was the eldest one and so went against the sage and attacked him. Ashura stood against his brother and fought him, leading to Ashura's victory and the banishment of Indra. On this basis Indra left his home like a wanderer and so found the last few survivors of the werewolf clan and lived with them since he found them very intriguing hence marking the start of the Uchiha clan.

Ashura found a lovely nice lady for himself and started his clan which would later be known as the Senju clan along with their near cousins the Uzumaki clan. Now that he found his successor, Hagoromo extracted the Juubi from his body and sealed her in a place where he was sure that no one could find, and asked her subjects to go into hiding. Before he died the sage wrote down a message for the person who could bring peace to the world but this message could only be deciphered by a person who possesses the rinnegan, a person with another dojutsu could also decipher this but completely, only bits and pieces.

Black zetsu a manifestation of the will of Kaguya had tampered with the tablet in which the sage had his message written down, as it now said that the true way to peace was to start the infinite Tsukuyomi. This was done by zetsu to revive Kaguya. And that message is the thing that will change the course of history.


	3. Chapter 3: The Foundations

Chapter-3: The foundations

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.**

After almost decades of war between the Uchiha and the Senju clans a truce was made between them and a village was found 'Konohagakure' (the village hidden in the leaves) by the two clans' head Madara Uchiha and Harshirama Senju. But the village started accepting the laws and doctrines of Harshirama's rather than Madara's and so their rules were laid down by Harshirama's principles. Now Madara thought that this would become a threat to his clan and hence he set out to get more power and take Konoha forcibly from Harshirama's hands. During Madara's quest for power he came across an old ruin, and once curiosity took over him he explored it and ended up discovering that this was the final resting place of the sage of six paths.

It was in this place that Madara found the seal that contained Juubi, and he also found the stone tablet which the Sennin had written his message for peace which was altered by zetsu. Satisfied by the power that he possessed Madara went back to fight with Harshirama for his control over Konoha. But he had ended up losing the battle when the Shodaime Hokage subdued the Juubi using his wood release and his wife Mito Uzumaki had it sealed inside of herself making her the second Jinchuriki of the Juubi. Madara was killed by Harshirama and everything was peaceful until the first great shinobi war broke out in which the Shodaime Hokage died leaving his brother Tobirama Senju to take the mantle of the Nidaime Hokage.

Tobirama faced his demise in the second great ninja war leaving his student Hiruzen Sarutobi to take up the mantle of the Sandaime Hokage. Then the third great shinobi war took place which the Sandaime Hokage survived, but in the previous war two of the greatest clans were wiped out leaving only one survivor from each clan by sheer luck, these clans were the Uzumaki clan who were greatly known for their creation and use of the most advanced fūinjutsu's (sealing jutsu), and the Namikaze clan known for their mastery over all kind of weapons and weapon forging. The Namikaze clan made the greatest weapons in all the great five elemental nations.

Kushina Uzumaki and Minato Namikaze were the only surviving members of their clans. They started in the footsteps of their ancestors and became shinobi to fight for their village. Minato was a prodigy from the beginning and took after his clan in weapon forging, while Kushina never actually took any serious interest in her clans sealing techniques as she knew only the basic few seals, she was a mediocre level four sealing novice. (A.N: - Mito is still alive making it the last two surviving members of the Uzumaki clan).

Mito who was now really old knew that she had to find a successor to be the next Jinchuriki, so she found three promising candidates. 'Tsunade Senju' (her granddaughter), Minato and Kushina. Now Tsunade was a Senju so she had a really strong life force but not enough chakra, Minato being the last Namikaze had a humongous amount of chakra (almost rivalling the Uzumaki's) but didn't have the required amount of life force needed to contain the demon, Kushina being an Uzumaki like Mito was ideal since she had a huge butt load amount of chakra and a really strong life force, so being the obvious choice Mito chose her.

A week after the extraction and resealing of the Juubi from Mito to Kushina, Mito had died leaving Kushina as the last Uzumaki and the third Jinchuriki of the Juubi. Being the Jinchuriki of the world's most powerful demon and the last Uzumaki, she was coveted by many nations. Once twelve Iwa ninja's abducted Kushina and ended up alerting the village due to a small mistake, but before the village could do anything they ended up escaping. Right before they reached the border of the village, Minato showed up after following the trail of red hair strands which Kushina snipped from her hair hoping that someone would find her.

Minato killed the twelve Iwa shinobi's and saved Kushina. When Minato was jumping along the trees while carrying Kushina bridal style she asked "how did u find me?" Minato while running looked into her eyes and answered "it was easy. I followed the trail of those beautiful red hair strands which I knew belonged to you since I really like your hair a lot". Kushina instantly became as red as her hair as Minato carried her all the way to Konoha. In due time both of them became two amongst the most feared shinobi's in all the elemental nations. Minato had taken a rather great interest in the art of fūinnjutsu after meeting Kushina and ended up becoming a grandmaster and created the hirashain with which he almost singlehandedly put a stop to the third great shinobi war earning him the name 'The Yellow Flash'.

Minato and Kushina got married and started living together somewhere in the far corner of the village. And in another two to three months Kushina became pregnant and Minato was declared as the Yondaime Hokage of the village.

\--Time skip nine months later--

Minato and Kushina could now be seen at the comforts of their home expecting the baby any day now. Kushina was tired and said that she wanted to go to sleep, Minato obliged and was helping her up when suddenly SPLASH!... both were perplexed for a few seconds and just as they snapped back to reality they realised 'KUSHINA'S WATER BROKE!!!!!


	4. Chapter 4: The Attack of The Ten Tails

Chapter-4: The Attack of the Ten Tails

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.**

Screams of excruciating pain could be heard from outside the cave where Kushina was giving birth. there were two anbu's guarding the cave entrance, two medical nins along with Tsunade Senju who was the greatest medical shinobi of her time and one of the three Sennin's. Along with them was the legendary super perverted toad sage Jiraya of the Sennin and the Yondaime Hokage of Konohagakure Minato Namikaze. Jiraya and Minato were standing next to a screaming Kushina in case anything should happen to the seal which becomes weak after childbirth.

"AHHHHHHHH!!! MINATO!! ISWEAR THAT I'M GOING TO KILL YOU FOR PUTTING ME IN THIS SITUATUION AFTER KNOCKING UP SO GOOD!!!". Both Minato and Jiraya comically sweat dropped after those words while the medical nins including Tsunade was giggling hysterically at this. "Alright Kushina I can see the baby just one more push and the baby should be out. PUSH KUSHINA! PUSH!" said Tsunade. Kushina screamed and pushed with all the energy she had left while screaming her lungs out which caused Minato to wince at the pain as she squeezed his hand, finally she had spent all her energy in that one last push and laid back on the bed panting from the pain.

The cries of a baby soon echoed across the cave. "It's a boy Kushina!" Tsunade exclaimed. She cleaned the new born in a towel and handed it to Minato's hands, he then took the baby and laid him next to his mother who looked at him and started crying tears of joy…. And a little bit of pain. "What do you think we should name him?" Kushina asked Minato, the Hokage thought of it for a while and said "We'll call him Naruto"," I like the name" Kushina said looking at him. Naruto had his father's blond kind of a little spiky hair and blue eyes, while he had his mother's face which was really pretty, all in all he was a very cute baby.

Suddenly to thuds could be heard from outside the cave, when everyone turned to look who it was they saw a man who wore an orange spiral mask with just one eyehole in it and a long black hooded robe, behind him on the floor were the two anbu's stationed to guard the entrance of the cave dead. "Hokage-sama, hand over the Jinchuriki!" the masked man said with a cold voice. "Who are you?" asked Minato while constantly thinking 'How did he find us? no one knew about this and who is this man?" "who I am is of no concern to you, now move away from the Jinchuriki", he commanded this time "NEVER!!" Minato shouted in a reply and charged him to catch him, but the man ended up pulling himself into a wormhole and disappeared. Before anyone could do anything, the man had grabbed Naruto from Kushina's arms and held him with a kunai at him.

"MY BABY!!", screamed Kushina while Minato just froze and said "NO!". since Minato was already away from Kushina the masked man threw Naruto out of the cave's entrance trying to get Minato to go after him, which was exactly what happened and Minato used his famous hirashain and flashed towards Naruto and caught him only to see that his blanket was rigged with explosive paper tags. Minato instantly removed the blanket threw it aside and disappeared in a yellow flash right before the explosion went off. Minato appeared at a room in his home and had put Naruto down on the bed kissed on his forehead and hirashined back to the cave in only under five seconds to see the two medical nins dead and a wounded Jiraya whose wounds were being tended to by Tsunade. "WHERE IS KUSHINA??!!", he asked them.

"The guy used some kind of jutsu to make himself intangible, attacked us and took Kushina away in some kind of wormhole". Jiraya answered while wincing at the pain. Minato was about to ask them where he took her but then he was stopped by a huge roar that spelt death for everyone. Minato instantly understood what it meant and hirashined towards it, when he reached the source of the roar Minato saw Kushina hanging by the chains that were tied to her hands as the Juubi was being extracted from her seal. Once it was done Kushina went limp from the pain and exhaustion from both the labour and the extraction, it was a miracle that she was even alive as it was only her will that kept her from letting go of that one strand of life left in her.

Minato instantly shushinned by her side, broke the chains that bound her and hirashined back to their house and laid Kushina next to their blond baby. Minato instantly walked off and brought back some scrolls a storage seal two brushes and some ink and told Kushina to write whatever she wanted to tell their baby boy. Once they were done he sealed their letter and something else into the scroll and went towards the village and left Kushina and their son alone.

Minato had hirashined to his Hokage head and the Juubi had noticed this and sent a tailed beast bomb towards him. Minato used some kind of intricate seal and teleported it to somewhere away from the village as it exploded. "Your fight is with me Hokage-sama". The masked man said from behind Minato as he caught Minato and tried to pull him into a wormhole, but before he could Minato had hirashined to some open clearing as the masked man had appeared in front of him. "Why are you doing this?" Minato asked the man answered "The village will know pain as I did Lord Hokage". And with that they charged each other.

Minato had formed a rassengan and ran towards him but he just ended up fazing through him just like Jiraya had said. 'My rasengan just went through him just like Jiraya had told me, so it all comes down to speed and precise timing. I have to anticipate his attacks and act a second faster than him, and my timing must be impeccable' Minato thought to himself as he took out one of his special three pronged kunai along with a charged rasengan in his hand.

Minato threw the kunai towards the man they both charged at each other with their arms outstretched to catch one another. Time seemed to slow down as the kunai just went through the man's forehead, and as the masked man was about to catch Minato after stopping his intangibility, Minato had hirashined above him thanks to the kunai he threw and twisted his body as he slammed his rasengan into the masked man's back driving him to the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust.

Just as the dust cleared the masked man just stood up and went back into the wormhole after saying "My objective is complete, no how will you save the village Hokage-sama?". Minato went back to the village just to be welcomed by the sight of burnt houses and ruined buildings with flames dancing around them along with charred, decapitated and ripped bodies with their innards and blood all over the street. Konoha was bathed in the blood of its very own people….it was a slaughter house.

He made his way through the village to the place where everyone was in a battle with the Juubi no Ookami. He went next to Hiruzen to see that Jiraya was there with him as they fought of the demon. "can you hold it off just for little while longer?" he asked the Sandaime Hokage and Hiruzen nodded giving him an affirmation. Minato hirashined back home and saw that Naruto was in Kushina's arms as she was cooing soft words to him, Minato walked up to her and said "Kushina we must seal the Juubi inside Naruto it is the only way to stop it from destroying the village".

"No Minato! We cannot do this to our son. Why not just take another child and seal it into that child", Kushina said bringing Naruto closer to herself. "We cannot Kushina he is the only one who can do it, he is the only Uzumaki left so he has to be the one and you know it. And besides how can we ask another parent their child when I as the Hokage cannot even give mine", Minato explained while a few drops of tears were running down his face. Kushina knew that this was the fact and there was nothing else they could do about it.

So Minato gave Kushina a kiss and took Naruto in his arms and hirashined away with Kushina with him. They reached the place next to Hiruzen and Minato summoned Gamabunta and asked him to hold off the Juubi for a few moments and went to do the preparations for the sealing. He completed the alter and placed Naruto in the centre of it and looked up to see the Juubi to be constricted by Kushina's chakra chains after Gamabunta had an eye of his gouged out by Juubi.

"I found this sealing technique among the Uzumaki sealing archives turns out that this was the sealing technique used by the Sage of six paths to seal the Juubi. The down side to this was that this sealing technique required the obliteration of two souls to complete it and it will also help him to harness the Juubi's chakra when needed" Minato said to Jiraya, Hiruzen and Kakashi who were stand in next to him. "SHIKI FÚIN!" ("REAPER DEATH SEAL!") Minato shouted bringing forth the Shinigami to do the sealing.

The Shinigami spoke "this seal requires the obliteration of two souls, meaning the souls obliterated cannot be brought back or reanimated using the Edo Tensei ever again". Minato stepped up and before Hiruzen could Kushina spoke up "I'll go, I don't have much long anyway, and it is the least I can do for Naruto and for the village". The Shinigami started the sealing and ended up sealing the Juubi as a whole into Naruto as Kushina and Minato channelled some of their chakra into the seal as a just in case precaution.

Just before the Shinigami could do anything Minato turned to Hiruzen, handed him a scroll a said to him "Old man, make sure Naruto is seen as the hero of the village who saved them tonight". Hiruzen nodded, then Minato turned towards Kushina and gave her a passionate kiss and told her "I love you Kushina Uzumaki-Namikaze", Kushina looked up to him and said "I love you to Minato Namikaze" as tears rolled down her cheek.

A hand then suddenly emerged from the Shinigami's stomach and pulled out both their souls and slashed it with his katana completely obliterating it from existence and completing the sealing, and the Shinigami vanished leaving the lifeless cold bodies of Minato and Kushina on the concrete marking the end of the terror of the Juubi and the end of two great geniuses of Konoha. Everyone bowed their heads in respect to the Yondaime Hokage and his wife for their sacrifice. As Hiruzen, Jiraya and Kakashi looked at Naruto they were shocked to see his blond hair slowly turning to a shiny silver like Kakashi's.


	5. Chapter 5: The Young Jinchuriki

Chapter: 5- The Young Jinchuriki.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.

Now it's been two days since the attack of the Juubi, the village and its people were getting back on their feet, hundreds dead, thousands injured and a hundred kids orphaned in this attack. People were mourning and crying for their lost ones in this attack. People were mourning and crying for their lost ones and their belongings, but the only thing keeping the village together was the Hokage. Hiruzen had taken back the Hokage seat to keep the turmoil in the village in check.

He was happy that he gave up this position but now thanks to this huge drama paperwork was starting to pile up on his desk stating the death count and the damage received by the village, and it was starting to give him a huge headache. But back to more important matters…. there was a council meeting in five minutes regarding this attack….and Naruto. He knew that this meeting wouldn't go well especially with the civilian side. This meeting could only be summed up in one word, the favourite of all Nara's…. 'troublesome'.

Hiruzen walked into the council chambers and took his seat and to his left was Danzo one of his advisors, and to his right was Jiraya and an anbu with gravity defying silver spiky hairs with a dog mask and he was holding baby Naruto in his arms, he was Kakashi Hatake Minato's only surviving student. "Hokage-sama what is the purpose of this meeting?" asked the impassive and stoic Hiashi Hyuga. Hiruzen let out a big sigh and replies "this meeting is regarding the Juubi that attacked the village".

Instantly everyone became silent and he continued, "as you know the Yondaime Hokage saved the village from the demon but died in that attempt. But you see this demon cannot be killed so the Yondaime Hokage ended up sealing the demon into this orphan boy". He said pointing towards Naruto. The room was deafeningly silent but then the civilian side of the council went into an uproar with many of them screaming different things like, "kill it! kill the demon before it kills us all!", "RUN! EVERYONE RUN!", "THE BOY IS THE DEMON, IT WILL KILL US ALL!" "EVERYONE FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE! FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE!!!!!".

Hiruzen had two tick marks on his forehead before he shouted "SILENCE!!". Immediately the council went silent at his command before one person from the civilian council spoke. "Hokage-sama we must execute the boy before the demon escapes" at these words Kakashi pulled Naruto closer towards him in a protective manner. But before anyone could say anything else Danzo spoke up saying "Hokage-sama I think we should keep the boy in our village he is a valuable asset and could vastly increase our military powers so, I suggest we integrate him into the root program immediately"

Hiruzen frowned at this but kept his composure and strongly refuted him "NO! Danzo the boy will not join root but will become one of our village's shinobi's", "Naruto will live amongst the orphans in this village till he becomes a gennin and anbu's will be kept around him for surveillance purposes". "This is now officially an SS class secret and will not leave this room and will not be spoken about, violation of this rule will be deemed as the highest level of treason and the person responsible will be immediately executed without the need for evidence". "This meeting is now adjourned".

Once this was said the whole council started leaving one by one until no one other than Hiruzen, Kakashi, Jiraya and baby Naruto was left in the room. Hiruzen slumped back into his chair and let out a long sigh, " Are you sure this is a good idea old man? ,I mean with the civilians being so restless and Danzo having his eyes on the kid?" Jiraya asked him. "There is nothing else we can do now Jiraya, if word that he is Minato's and Kushina's child got out then he would be targeted and coveted by many nations for either personal gain or revenge, and with the village in ruins then those attempts would only be much easier for them".

Jiraya and Kakashi thought about this and understood that this was the best course for action and agreed with him. But little did they know that the civilian council had already started gossiping and the word spread like wild fire all along the village. Hiruzen had finished all the paperwork's related to Naruto and his admission to the orphanage before anything else was done.

(A.N: - yeah I'm sorry that this chapter was really small but I'll make up for it in the next chapter by writing a really long one and hopefully every chapter from here on will be really long so the typing and the update might take some time. So everyone stay safe and peace out…. for now).


	6. Chapter 6 Naruto's Nightmare Called Life

Chapter: -6 Naruto's Nightmare Called Life.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.

The sound of rain water dripping from the broken window and hitting the damp floor could be heard echoing throughout the small, cold, dark and barren room tearing away at a lonely and abandoned heart. A small figure could be seen scrunched up on a barely standing makeshift bed trying to fight the cold of the rain outside while gazing into the dark clouded sky of the night through the broken window.

This was the life of a four-year-old boy named Naruto Uzumaki who was cold, hungry and unloved. Naruto grew up in this wretched place the people called an orphanage where he was abandoned by someone who thought he was a curse in their life. Naruto not being able to sleep got up carefully and looked out into the streets to see the bustling streets of Konoha, but what his lifeless eyes the most were all the happy families walking under umbrellas while the parents of the child held their child close to them to protect them from the rain.

Naruto was never really allowed anywhere outside the orphanage other than to go to the academy hence, he grew to love the academy even though all the teachers despised him and gave him threatening looks all the time, all except for one teacher named Iruka Umino who actually took some interest in him and talk to him and not sneer or avoid him. Even most of his class mates were the same as his teacher except for a few two to three of them.

Naruto was never looked after properly so always played pranks on everyone just to get their attention since he didn't know any other way. No one ever really taught him anything so he's never really felt any smiles, a polite word, a hug or a kiss or even love all these were just so foreign to him. The only other contact he had with the people outside the academy were the wardens of the orphanage who would come visit him every day at night to teach him a lesson on…. love.

He was never allowed to play or mingle with the kids of his age outside or within the orphanage. He was barely fed and was never allowed to come into contact with the people or the couples who would come to the orphanage for adoption. The hell, he was given a separate place to stay, which apparently was the run down utility shed of the orphanage, this is where he was right now. 'why? why me? what have I done?' were the questions that he always asked himself.

He was broken out of his thoughts as the door to the utility shed slowly creaked open revealing a big man standing at the other side of the door. Naruto saw him and a small whimper escaped his lips as he squirmed into a corner of the shed and curled himself up into a ball as his 'teacher' walked towards him. "Alright demon time for today's lesson on love" the man said while picking him up. Naruto braced himself for the man's fist to collide into his face by closing his eyes shut.

It was at that moment Naruto felt a sharp pain as he was driven into the cold damp floor by the punch, he didn't dare to move hoping that he would just loose his consciousness and wake up once todays lessons were over. But luck never seemed to favour him not once, and especially not this time. The warden not showing any mercy, kicked him in his ribs breaking a few making it hard to breath for Naruto, kicked him near his pelvis putting a crack in that bone, broke an arm of his and so on until the warden was exhausted.

He wiped his brow looked towards Naruto and said "See you for your classes tomorrow, same place and same time, AAAHAHAHAHAH", and left leaving a beaten, broken and bruised Naruto on the floor. Naruto slowly and carefully picked himself up off the floor crying and wincing at the pain, he had not screamed once during his lessons. Naruto let out a sigh of relief thinking that it was over but he was wrong, the same warden walked into the room again while holding a piece of wood which had pieces of metal sticking out from its end, and while wearing a very sadistic grin on his face he said "Since you took your lessons really well today I thought I would leave you a small parting gift.

Naruto almost screamed 'NO' when suddenly the warden had lodged the sick into Naruto's thigh breaking and piercing right through his left femur, he couldn't take the pain anymore and finally let out what he had kept buried in his mouth…. he screamed, screamed like no four-year-old child should, he screamed out so loud hoping that someone would save him from this bloody nightmare, but to his avail no one ever did come to his help….'EVER!'

The warden took joy in his screams and took it as an encouragement, like a boost to his ego and started beating him up more with blood splattering onto the wall's and his face. "THAT'S IT DEMON SCREAM! SCREAM FOR MY EARS! WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO KILL YOU BUT I'LL DO THIS VILLAGE A FAVOUR AND FINISH YOU OFF. NOW DIE!!!" the warden screamed wile thrashing Naruto. Naruto couldn't take it anymore; but to his surprise the warden stopped sweaty and groggy from exhaustion, he threw the bloodied stick to the other corner of the room and spat at a crying, whimpering, shaking and seriously mutilated Naruto who was lying with his face down on his own pool of blood while his whole body was filled with deep gashes and his dress torn and left in tatters and covered in blood.

The warden before leaving aimed to finish of Naruto by stabbing him with a pocket knife that he carried around with him but Naruto saw him inching the knife towards him, and out of complete fear he screamed "NOOOO!!" but unknown to Naruto there was a sudden burst of chakra was sent out from his person launching the warden away from him through the flimsy walls of the shed and through the orphanage's concrete compound wall making him roll and skid on the ground for a few meters before finally coming to a halt and letting out a very loud scream which alerted almost all the staff of the orphanage.

Under two minutes all the staff was standing around the warden. Some grimaced and some let out a loud gasp while the others took in some cold air leaving a loud hissing sound at the gruesome sight in front of them. The warden had a totally broken and reformed nose, his skull had caved in from the impact, his right arm was twisted in a very gruesome manner, his left elbow was bent in the wrong direction, a few his ribs were sticking out and his left leg was twisted and was now facing the other direction.

The head warden commanded the others to rush him to the hospital and they did so in haste. The head warden turned around to see a hole in the compound and a hole in the shed where the demon a.k.a Naruto was there. She instantly rushed over there just to see a bruised Naruto lying in a pool of blood. Naruto was about to succumb to his injuries when suddenly somebody grabbed hold of his shoulders and hoisted him up causing Naruto to wince at the pain from the contact. He looked up to see the a very angry head warden staring at him.

Before he could say anything she started screaming at his face saying "LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID!", "YOU ALLMOST KILLED HIM, YOU UNGREATFUL WRETCHED DEMON!!". "THAT'S IT I'VE HAD IT WITH YOU! THE HOKAGE MIGHT HAVE PUT YOU HERE AND YOU MIGHT KNOW HIM BUT I'VE HAD IT, YOU WERE TROUBLE FROM THE VERY FIRST DAY YOU GOT HERE SO I'M TAKING YOU OUT, YOURE GOING OUT ON THE STREETS NOW!!!". She grabbed him while another warden who was with her picked up his bag, which contained another change of clothes.

The head warden dragged him along the floor like a corpse leaving a trail of blood along the way till the door, once she opened the door she threw him out sending him flying along with his bag till he hit the streets and Naruto turned around to see her close the door with a loud thud, leaving him on the cold, dark and rainy streets of Konoha. Naruto slowly picked himself up wincing from the pain of the slightly bleeding wounds and started limping very slowly while dragging his bag along with him.

Naruto finally reached behind a shop and sat down next to a dumpster leaning on it. He wasn't angry or sad but was actually…. Happy, really happy knowing that he wouldn't have to experience these nightmares ever again, but he thought 'what do I do, now that I have no place to stay?', putting those thoughts aside for later Naruto tried to get some much needed sleep by using his bag as a pillow, but the rain that was still pouring on him made it hard. Thanks to the pain and the exhaustion from today's lesson's it didn't take him long to drift off to sleep with a small smile and hopeful heart for tomorrow, unlike his days in the orphanage where he was broken and hopeless.

(A.N: - that sudden burst of chakra that was released from Naruto's person caused a sudden acceleration in his healing. That's why he was only bruised and slightly bloodied and not totally hurt when the head warden came to see him.)


	7. Chapter 7: New Day

Chapter: -7 New Day.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.

DAWN……….

By next morning the rain stopped pouring and the last and final vestiges of the rain clouds fell, th bright, warm and welcoming rays of the sun embraced the village hidden in the leaves and a small silver haired boy who was sleeping, he started squirming against the warmth of the sunlight falling on his skin after a long sleep in the cold rain. Naruto woke up rubbing his eyes and stretched to relive the pain from last night's torture, only to be welcomed by even more pain and the felling of some bones moving in the wrong place. Naruto winced and grunted at the pain but only then did he notice that his white shirt was covered in his blood and was also in his tattered state, that was when he realised that he had to change before going to the academy.

But when he turned around his bag was missing, "I only a night on the streets and I've already been robbed?" he asked himself. Grief overcoming him of the thought of losing the only thing that he owned, Naruto looked and cried, after a few moments of crying he knew that crying won't do him any good and hence left towards the academy limping. When Naruto reached his destination he noticed that no one was here and instantly realized that he's early so, he walked towards the restrooms and got freshened up and went into his class and sat at his regular seat at the far back of the room, seeing that he had a lot of time to spare decided to take some rest so he put his arms on the table and placed his head on it and wound up falling asleep.

Slowly the class was filled with its students all of them took a look at Naruto but decided to ignore him. Soon Iruka walked into the class and begun his lessons. Soon half way through the class Iruka stopped and took the roll call as a small break for the students, "…. Naruto Uzumaki….", "Naruto!" everyone turned around to see Naruto fast asleep and started laughing hysterically, Iruka walked up to him and was about to shout at him and wake him up, that's when he noticed Naruto's torn and blood stained shirt. Iruka became worried and tried waking up Naruto by shaking him by his shoulders.

"Naruto…. Naruto…. Naruto!", instantly he woke up and brought his hand to cover his face as if he was about to get hit and shouted "PLEASE DON'T HURT ME ANYMORE!!" with a lot of fear etched in his voice, a small whimper escaped his lips along with tears forming along the corners of his eyes. Iruka was totally shocked and taken aback by Naruto's sudden outburst, the whole class (except for a few) instantly burst out in a fit of laughter causing Naruto to cry and run out of the class room. Iruka stood there for a few moments trying to analyse what just happened and shouted "THAT'S ENOUGH ALL OF YOU!", the whole class was suddenly drowned in silence as they watched their sensei run after Naruto.

Finally, after a few minutes of searching Iruka found Naruto sitting against a tree with his knees to his chest and his hands were in front holding his legs together whimpering, Iruka went ahead and sat next to him. A few moments of silence were shared between the two with only Naruto's sniffles being heard before Iruka decided to break it by asking him a question "They…. They hurt you didn't they?" Naruto not wanting to say anything merely just nodded. Iruka wanted to comfort the boy so he went next to him and pulled him into a hug, with such an action being so foreign to Naruto he flinched and resisted against it, but once Iruka said that it's okay and that he won't hurt him Naruto finally gave in and started crying into Iruka's vest. Once Naruto's crying had stopped the Chunin took a proper look at Naruto only to find that he had wounds and deep gashed on his body, his eyes narrowed at this sight and he felt so infuriated at the orphanage. "Naruto…. Let's go to the hospital and get your wounds checked" Naruto just nodded and Iruka carried him to the hospital.

\--At the Hospital--

After almost fifteen minutes of persuading the doctor she finally agreed to do a full check-up on Naruto. Once he got report he was shocked. Ok shocked was an understatement to what his feelings were at that time. Multiple lacerations, torn tendons, torn muscles, broken bones, ribs and huge amounts of blood loss. It was a miracle that Naruto was even standing. The doctors had him patched up and he was already feeling better. Iruka knew that he was hungry from his stomach grumbling so took him to Ichiraku's to get some ramen. On the way Iruka was lost in his own thoughts like 'why? What happened? What did a four-year-old boy do to deserve such brutality?' before he could go any further with his thoughts it was interrupted with them reaching Ichiraku's the got in and was greeted by Teuchi "hey what can I get you two?" he handed both of them one menu and waited for their orders.

"I'll have a bowl of pork ramen please" Iruka said, but Naruto's order didn't come so Teuchi looked at him to see that Naruto was glaring at the menu as if trying to burn a hole into it, after a few more seconds of glaring Naruto let out a sigh and showed Teuchi the menu and pointed at what he wanted. The old man took their orders and was about to go into the kitchen to get their food before he stopped at its entrance and asked Naruto "You don't know how to…. Read, do you kid? Naruto instantly shook his head sideways answering his question. "WHAT!" was what Iruka shouted before asking him. "Naruto do you really not know how to read?" Naruto replied with a no.

That reply got Iruka thinking ''So that's why he has been failing all his exams". Iruka was broken out of his thoughts when a bowl of ramen was kept in front of the two of them. Iruka looked up and said a thanks to Teuchi and looked at Naruto and asked him to say a thank you, and Naruto did so and they started eating. Iruka was about to eat when he asked Naruto "Naruto didn't they teach you how to read in the orphanage?" Naruto said a no, and started digging into his bowl as if it was the first time he's seen food in days. Purely out of curiosity Iruka looked at Naruto to see that he was really thin and short for a boy of his age and asked "Naruto when was the last time you had anything to eat?" "Two days ago Iruka-sensei" Naruto replied while happily chomping down on his bowl of ramen.

Both Iruka and Teuchi was taken aback by his answer and Iruka asked him another question "Naruto what did they used to give you to eat in the orphanage?", Naruto stopped eating and answered "usually I don't get to eat anything to eat, and if I do its usually some really mouldy bread or some leftovers if I'm lucky." Iruka instantly almost threw up the two mouth full of ramen that he ate. He got up to go and beat up every single one of the warden's ass into the ground till they begged for his mercy, Naruto instantly felt the hate from Iruka and caught his sleeve effectively stopping him and begged him not to hurt them. 'How can Naruto be so forgiving to them after what they have done to him?' 'you really are one of a kind Naruto' thought Iruka. "Ok Naruto lets go get some new clothes for you and go meet the Hokage once that's done ok?" "Alright Iruka-sensei, but before we leave could you buy another bowl of ramen for me, please!" "Sure Naruto!" Iruka said smiling.

After chomping down another three bowls of ramen, Naruto and Iruka set out to shop for another new set of clothes for Naruto, they entered a shop and the lady at the counter refused to sell clothes to Naruto but again after another fifteen minutes of persuasion the lady finally agreed to sell some clothes to him. After going through most of the clothes Naruto really liked the black ones but they were all kind of expensive so decided to check for something more…. cheaper and while going through the rest on particular set of dress caught his eye, a kill-me orange track suit. He really didn't like the colour but the price was almost close to nothing, so not wanting to burden Iruka-sensei he took it. Iruka tried persuading Naruto by telling him that ninja's needed stealth which is not achievable through this suit, but Naruto was hell bent on getting this suit and so Iruka agreed to his choice. Naruto had gotten changed into this suit and surprisingly it was super comfy as they went to get this suit billed the cashier saw this and was actually since someone actually brought this suit which was sitting in this shop for god knows how long since no one would buy it. Happy on the thought of getting rid of this suit she said that she would give all the five pairs that she had for the price of one, they agreed and took the rest five pairs after paying for just one. Naruto was happy with his choice knowing that he didn't put a dent in Iruka-sensei's wallet, Iruka then sealed the rest into a sealing scroll and left with Naruto to the Hokage's office with Naruto speaking about his life till now.

\--X at the Hokage tower X--

Sarutobi Hiruzen could be seen battling his greatest foe to have ever lived, the only one who kept coming at him no matter what happened…. 'PAPER WORK!' oh how he wished someone would walk through that door to give him a break from this never ending pile of paper work, to his luck an academy teacher and a silver haired boy wearing a kill-me orange tracksuit walked in while shouting "JIJI!". "Naruto-kun what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in the orphanage?" asked Hiruzen while Naruto flinched at the mention of the orphanage, something which didn't go unnoticed by the Hokage. "Actually Hokage-sama we had come here to talk about it". "Naruto can you tell the Hokage everything you told me on our way here?", Naruto nodded and explained everything to the Hokage all the way from the beginning. By the end of it the Hokage's eyes were covered by his hat as he was fuming with rage. "THOSE BASTARDS! IENTRUSTED Naruto TO THEM BELIVING EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE AND THEY WOULD TAKE GOOD CARE OF HIM!". "Iruka I need you to make other living arrangements for Naruto for now." "Lord Hokage I was hoping that Naruto would live with me from now on. I would take good care of him." Iruka told the Hokage convincing him. "Alright, you can take him in. but take good care of him", stated the Hokage to which Iruka gave an affirmatory nod. Naruto embraced the Hokage in a hug for the first time which the Hokage returned glad fully, Naruto and Iruka left and ran towards Iruka's home before it rained and thankfully they had reached just before the rain started pouring. Iruka took Naruto in and gave him a tour of the house and showed him to the room where he will be sleeping. Iruka then had put Naruto to bed to get the rest that he deserved. Once Naruto was asleep Iruka walked out of the room and made a plan to teach Naruto how to read and write and to begin his training from tomorrow. 'Looks like Naruto's going to have a new life from tomorrow onwards' thought Iruka with a smile as he got dressed for bed and turned off all the lights.

(A.N:- please review and let me know if I'm good or just ok).


	8. Chapter 8: A New Life

(A.N):- Hey guys sorry I didn't update yesterday, I was busy and had a long day that's why. so I'll be uploading 2 chapters together now, so as usual plz read and review and let ke know. Now lets get back to the atory shall we ...

Chapter: - 8 A NEW LIFE.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.

As the clouds from last night's rain dissipated brand new rays of light started making its presence known in Konoha, one of the many light rays phased through a window and fell on the eyes of a small, sleepy Naruto. Feeling the rays hit his eyes he started stirring in his new comfy bed and covered himself with his blanket. Iruka at that very instant walked in shouting "GOODMORNING Naruto! Rise and shine sleepyhead it's a beautiful day" with a beaming smile. Naruto stirred even more and scrunched himself up into a ball and said "Iruka-sensei…. I don't wanna wake up, this bed is so warm and comfy" said Naruto with a low sleepy voice. "Now, now Naruto, you do know that you have to go to the academy right?" Iruka asked, "Hai sensei I'll be up in two minutes " answered Naruto lazily to Iruka's question. "alright Naruto, wake up, freshen up and meet me down at the kitchen for breakfast" he said getting a nod from Naruto as he left.

Naruto hesitantly woke up arranged his bed, brushed his teeth, took a shower and went down to meet Iruka for breakfast. The sweet scent of toast, eggs and bacon infiltrated his nostrils causing him to drool and his stomach to grumble. Once he was at the kitchen table he saw that everything was ready for them to eat, they both sat down and had breakfast with Naruto attacking his food with such fervour causing Iruka to giggle lightly. Once they were done and the dishes were washed with some help from Naruto they were getting ready to leave to the academy, and once they were out of the house an anbu wearing a dog mask shushinned in front of them (we all know who he is), "Iruka-san, Hokage-sama requests yours and Naruto's presence at the council immediately." Before either of them could say anything the anbu had taken hold of their arms and shushinned away into the council chambers.

\--X at the council chambers X--

Three figures could be seen shushining at the centre of the chambers. "Ah! Iruka, Naruto thank you for coming at such short notice", said the Hokage with a disheartened face while looking at Naruto, Iruka instantly knew that this meeting spelled disaster for Naruto. They moved to the Hokage's side as the proceedings began. A member from the civilian side and spoke, "The accused Naruto Uzumaki is being charged for the crime of attempt to murder", all the civilians had a smug smile on their faces after this was read, while the shinobi side was taken aback by this charge. "Lord Hokage whom did Naruto try to murder?" Inoichi Yamanaka asked after coming out of his stupor, "A warden at the orphanage" replied the man who read out the charges. "BULLSHIT!" "Naruto WOULD NEVER HURT SOMEONE!" shouted Iruka while swiping his hands in front of him. Iruka and the Hokage knew about this since Naruto had told them about it, but the only explanation they could come up with was that the Juubi released a sudden burst of chakra in a dire attempt to save the boy.

"HE ALMOST KILLED THE WARDEN! NOW HE'S HOSPITALISED" shouted another civilian. "THAT'S BECAUSE THEY KEPT BEATING HIM UP TILL AN INCH FROM HIS DEATH EVERYDAY OF HIS LIFE!" shouted Iruka with venom clearly etched in his voice. Everyone let out an audible gasp, even the usually stoic and indifferent Hiashi Hyuga had narrowed his eyes at this, Naruto looked down fighting the tears that threatened to come out from the memories of all those gruesome nights, the dog masked anbu a.k.a Kakashi Hatake clenched his fist really hard trying to contain the anger rising within him, "what proof do you have to validate your point?" asked one of the civilians. Iruka instantly pulled out a sealing scroll and unsealed it revealing all the contents in it. There were five pairs of Naruto's track suit along with a medical report and a torn and bloodied white shirt and black pant with the stench of dried blood emanating from it.

Iruka presented the dress and the medical report to the Hokage, the Hokage picked up the report and started reading it aloud " Multiple lacerations, torn tendons, torn muscles, broken bones, ribs and huge amounts of blood loss and internal organ damage" his voice gradually reducing as he read it making it barely audible at the last one. The whole chamber went silent until the Hokage spoke up "What…. Is…. the…. MEANING OF THIS?" the Hokage shouted fuming with rage leaking inhumane amounts of KI at the civilian side making it really hard for them to breathe. "Not only that Hokage-sama Naruto was left to starve for days together making him seriously malnourished, and was kicked out of the orphanage in the middle of the night after which he had to sleep next to a dumpster for the rest of the night in the cold rain." Added Iruka. By this time every member of the shinobi council excluding a Fugaku Uchiha were glaring daggers at the civilians. "Plus the boy was not taught to read and write causing him to fail all of his exams, he also wasn't taught about manners and etiquettes." Added Iruka barely keeping his anger in check. Some members of the civilian council frowned knowing that their plan to make the demon spawn fail his exams by not teaching him how to read or write had failed, they wanted to keep him as a civilian so they could have complete control over him and kill him off. Planning to play their last card one member from the civilian council stood up and spoke "we are the civilian council and since the boy is still not Chunin he falls under our jurisdiction hence it is decided that the boy will go back to the orphanage". Suddenly Naruto who was standing behind Iruka screamed "NOOOOOO!" and caught his leg, hiding and quivering behind him in total fear. "Please don't send me back there…. Please I'm begging you!" pleaded Naruto while sobbing.

Iruka bent down and pulled Naruto into a protective hug trying to get him to calm down. "ENOUGH!" shouted the Hokage and continued, you might be in charge of the civilian affairs…. But I get the final say in matters like this. And I say that Naruto lives with Iruka till the coming future". "NO!" shouted all the members of the civilian council, "The boy will either go back to the orphanage or will live on his own." Said one of the civilian member. To put an end to this, matter a poll was put up on whether Naruto should go back to the orphanage or live on his own, after the vote it was decided that Naruto would live on his own in an apartment. Naruto was sad knowing that he won't get to stay with Iruka-sensei but happy knowing that he wouldn't have to go back to the orphanage. The meeting was dismissed and Naruto and Iruka went towards the Hokage's office to get the necessary paperwork done so that he could move into his apartment. Once all was done Hiruzen had really uneasy feeling in his gut so he assigned Kakashi to keep watch over Naruto.

Iruka and Naruto was at his apartment. It was small but was really cheap, once they had everything set and done in his apartment Iruka had started to teach Naruto on how to read and write. To his surprise Naruto had an identic memory and so he picked it up really quick. After about 4 hours of learning Naruto could now write basic sentences and read 2 syllable words. Iruka then started to teach Naruto on how to do basic transformations and had found out that he had zero chakra control and that his chakra has a very light feeling, but really potent than usual regular chakra and that his chakra was black in colour instead of blue. Since Iruka was a sensory ninja he was able to sense this and it was around this time that Iruka noticed that Naruto had really huge chakra reserves, so big that it would make most Chunin's and even some Jonin's chakra reserve look really small compared to his. And so he decided that it was time to teach Naruto chakra control. Knowing that he was too small to do any regular chakra control exercises Iruka decided that meditation was the best option for Naruto.

After almost 45 minutes of mediation Iruka took Naruto for Ichiraku's and Teuchi was flabbergasted to see that Naruto could read now and that its only been a day since he saw him. once they were done with their meal Iruka told Naruto to meet him after his classes in the academy to continue his lessons. Iruka decided to drop Naruto off home to make shure that nothing happens during his walk back home, while they were walking Iruka was getting pissed off with all the glares Naruto was getting from the people and Naruto was completely oblivious to all the hateful stares being sent at him. Iruka protectively caught hold of Naruto's shoulder and brought Naruto closer to himself. Once Naruto was dropped off at his apartment Iruka started walking back home while Naruto went to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9: Transfusion

CHAPTER: - 9 TRANSFUSION.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE.

**WARNING:** THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS GRAPHICAL TORTURE SCENE, BUT CONTAINS A **VERY** IMPORTANT PART OF THE STORY SO TAKE PRECAUTIONS.

It has almost been 2 weeks since Naruto has been under Iruka's tutelage, by now Naruto is able to read and write properly, gained some good amount of chakra control, but it was still not good enough to do a clone jutsu, and had finished learning a good amount of this year's portions (just enough to help him scrape through the exams). All in all, Naruto had made amazing progress in the past 2 weeks. He would spend a LOT of time with Iruka-sensei and the old man Hokage would come and visit him from time to time, but right now Naruto could be seen walking back to his apartment being really anxious about tomorrows test. He knew that feeling like this wouldn't do him any good so after reaching his apartment he took nice a cold shower and got some shut eye.

Time skip: next day at the academy

Naruto had reached the academy earlier than usual today being kind of excited for the test. After a little while the class was full and all the students were seated at their respective places, a few moments later Iruka walks in and announces that today will be a written test, Naruto's spirits was lifted at this announcement, being very pragmatic Naruto knew that he didn't have a flying pigs chance in passing the jutsu exam. Once the papers were given Naruto started writing down everything that he knew though it wasn't much, once he was done Naruto submitted his paper and left for his home knowing that he won't have any extra class from Iruka-sensei since he would be evaluating their papers. So Naruto went home meditated for a while and then went to sleep excited to see his results tomorrow.

Time skip: the result board.

Naruto tried pushing his small body through the crowd to be able to see his result, once he was in front he checked the results but instinctively went to the bottom of the list and there he saw his name 'Naruto Uzumaki' result…. 'PASS'. Naruto silently walked out of the crowd and just stood there in silence trying to comprehend what he just read, and when it finally settled in he lifted up to see Iruka standing there smiling at Naruto. Naruto started crying but these weren't tears of sorrow but tears of pure joy, Naruto ran towards Iruka and pulled him into a bone crushing hug while constantly saying "I passed Iruka-sensei, I've finally passed an exam!", "congratulations Naruto! Come on lets go to Ichiraku's to celebrate" Iruka said getting a nod from Naruto as the teacher and student left for a small celebration.

Time skip: 5 years later.

Naruto after passing the exams started a new life at the academy. He didn't fail anymore exams but never actually put an effort for any of the written exams since he thought it was just a waste of time and hence had always received just pass marks putting him at the dead last of the class. Naruto always wore a mask hiding his talents and strong points like he did with his exams, he made everyone except the Hokage, Iruka, Kakashi, Yugao (neko)and Itachi believe that he was that immature, dumb, and annoying prankster. Though Naruto acted dumb his skills in stealth, strategies, trap setting and infiltration was unbelievable. Naruto once broke into the anbu's HQ which was the most guarded place in the village wearing that same kill-me orange suit and added the same orange coloured dye into their laundry machines completely undetected. Next thing you know; you could see anbu's wearing orange tutu's. Naruto's danger awareness and danger prediction levels were off the charts, mostly due to being constantly attacked by civilian mobs and attempts to murder him by poisoning his food and leaf shinobi's who were after his head.

Due to all this Naruto could go into hiding and make it very difficult even for the most skilled anbu's to find him, but Naruto would still get caught sometimes, get beaten till an inch from his death until all the civilians who were beating him up were satisfied or until an anbu comes by and kills two of the civilians and disperses the crowd, but the end result was always the same, he would end up waking up in the hospital every time this happened. Even in the hospitals the doctors and the nurses would try to kill him by administering some poisons, but even then the silver haired boy wouldn't die thanks to the demon within him. On his birthdays it was even worse as the people would be so hell bent on killing him, he would get away sometimes and receive a beating of a lifetime, but none of this was compared to what would happen to him this time.

Naruto could be seen walking carefully through the streets of Konoha trying not to draw anyone's attention towards him. Naruto right now was around 4 ft. 9 inches tall but was still small compared to the other kids of his age, Naruto also had a long silver kind of spiky hair which came up to his shoulder with two long bangs on either side of his face (exactly like Minato's hair but a little longer and not as spiky). Today was Naruto's birthday!!! Usually he would spend his birthdays with Iruka-sensei, Hokage-jiji, Kakashi, Yugao, Itachi, Teuchi and Ayame, but today all off them were busy with their missions, paperwork and their jobs so they told Naruto that they would meet him in the evening at his apartment. Seeing that he had a lot of time left he decided to head back to his apartment and meditate, but on his way back he heard people saying that they were going to get the demon boy at his home and make him pay for what he has done. Hearing this Naruto hurriedly went home to start laying booby-traps to stop those mobs in their tracks.

Being happy with his work he went to meditating and around 30 minutes into his meditation Naruto could hear the mob approaching and standing outside his apartment building, Naruto was patiently waiting with a sinister grin on his face to hear the traps go off but, his smile slowly faded as the traps didn't go off even after 10 minutes. Naruto's danger senses were suddenly going overboard so he instantly got up and started running toward the window in his apartment. At that very instant all the 3 traps that he had laid went off simultaneously as his apartment door flung open to reveal a Chunin holding a katana, jumping and thrusting the katana at the place where Naruto was seated 2 seconds ago.

Not thinking twice Naruto jumped, smashing through his window and landing in the alley next to his apartment, as soon as his foot touched the ground he turned to his left to see a huge mob running towards him, 'SHIT!!! They actually had his planned through.' Thought Naruto before he started running as fast as his little legs could take him, suddenly out of nowhere his danger senses told him to duck and so he did only to see a couple dozen of kunai's and shuriken's aimed for his head to miss and embed themselves into the ground. Knowing that he'd die if he stopped, Naruto sprinted forward, a few minutes into running through the streets with the shinobi's and civilians hot on his tail, his danger senses told him to jump, but before he could react a kunai had scraped his cheek and 2 shuriken's had embedded itself on Naruto's back, but with the adrenaline rushing through his veins the pain was numbed a he kept running another few minutes into the race a few more people had joined the hunting party.

Naruto took a right and then a left and kept running, but suddenly he couldn't breathe properly and his heart started to beat so hard that he thought that it would rip a hole in his chest and jump out, that's when he realised that the shuriken's were laced with poison but he still kept running, a few seconds later Naruto's legs wouldn't move anymore, as he froze in his tracks and fell face down on the ally floor. 'DAMN IT!!', 'That was a paralysis poison' thought Naruto as he laid there on the unforgiving ground, but before he could think of anything else he felt one of the shinobi's stamping on his face. "well lookie here, the poison finally took its toll on you huh, DEMON SPAWN!!" said the Chunin before stomping on his face really hard a few more times. "It took longer than we expected but it did its work in the end" said another Jounin standing behind Naruto before kicking him on his back causing Naruto to wince at the pain.

Naruto couldn't do anything since he couldn't move, but to make things worse the poison coursing through his veins was amplifying the pain that they were inflicting on him. The shinobi's and the villagers started their work, they kept beating, kicking and stabbing him till he was just a bloodied piece of meat, the villagers found a crate of glass bottles in the alley so they used it to stab and cut him like a piece of meat.

A civilian found a piece of wood lying in the corner so he picked it up and walked towards Naruto, another civilian saw this and he lifted Naruto's right leg up and on que the civilian holding the stick started continuously hitting his leg with the stick while laughing like a maniac throughout the beating

A few shots later everyone heard a sickening 'crack' and then a 'snap' signifying that Naruto's bone had been broken, but the civilian didn't stop and kept beating his leg until only the sound of wood hitting flesh was heard.

Satisfied with their handiwork they all stopped and looked to see a bloodied Naruto on the ground lying in a pool of his own blood with uncountable amounts of cuts and multiple visible broken bones which were sticking out of his body. The villagers were leaving one by one while the shinobi's stayed back and admired their work until one of them spoke up, "Hey you know what, it's been quite a while since I had some target practice so, why don't we practice now while using him as a dummy?" " yeah that's a great idea! Let's do some practice." Said another shinobi as they walked towards Naruto.

They took hold of Naruto and took him towards the far end of the wall and had crucified him on the wall by shoving a kunai's through his palms and legs. Naruto hadn't screamed even once during this torture session, he wouldn't give in and wouldn't give them the pleasure of hearing him scream and beg for mercy.

Naruto had his head hung down due to exhaustion and immeasurable amounts of pain, 'why?', 'why me?', 'what have I done to these people?', 'Why…. Why won't they just kill me rather than making me suffer like this?' he thought as he felt a really sharp pain of a kunai being stabbed into the right side of his body, Naruto winced mentally as he wasn't going to move and struggle during their practice.

All the shinobis were at the end of the alley continuously taking turns in throwing kunai's towards him barely missing all of his vital spots intentionally to keep him alive during their practice. By now there was a pool of blood under Naruto's body with all the kunai's embedded on him.

One of the Chunin's had asked Naruto to look up towards them, and as a kid Naruto's curiosity got the better of him, and as he painfully lifted his head and looked up to see why they had asked him to look at them, but the last thing that he saw with his right eye was the edge of a kunai just millimetres away from it. Time seemed to slow down for a moment there for him and before he could even process what was going on the kunai had embedded itself in his right eye socket causing his head to be thrown aback.

The Chunin who had thrown the kunai shouted "BULLS-EYE!" as he high-fived everyone there. Naruto didn't feel anything when the kunai hit him, but when the pain had finally registered it was so painful that Naruto let out a bloodcurdling scream of pure agonizing pain which resonated throughout the entire village striking fear in the hearts of everyone who heard it while thinking 'What caused someone so much agonizing pain to scream like this?'.

Meanwhile near Naruto's apartment.

Hiruzen, Iruka, Kakashi, Itachi and Yugao were walking towards Naruto's apartment to take him out to Ichiraku's and celebrate his birthday when they suddenly heard the scream, all of them instantly recognised it as Naruto's voice and started running towards it while screaming "Naruto!" in unison.

Meanwhile with Naruto another Chunin who was throwing a kunai slipped and it ended up hitting Naruto's elbow joint severing his arm at that point, seeing this they planned to put him out of his misery as two shinobi's came forward and lunched a 'fireball' jutsu and a 'gale wind palm' jutsu at him. The two jutsu's merged to form a very big fireball travelling towards Naruto, but just before the fireball could hit him Kakashi jumped in front of Naruto shouting "Earth style: Mud wall" causing a wall of mud to rise from the ground blocking the fireball while Itachi and Yugao landed in front of the Chunin's beheading them while Iruka and the Hokage took Naruto down from the wall.

"Iruka…. Sensei, jiji" said Naruto before blacking out. all of them gasped at Naruto's gruesome state but they could think about that later so the five of them rushed him to the hospital, while Iruka carried Naruto and his severed arm. Once they had reached they had asked the doctors to heal him and all of them refused to, but one glare from Hiruzen was enough to change their mind. They had him put in an emergency room and had all sorts of life support machines attached onto him just to keep him alive.

"He's lost too much blood. He needs a blood transfusion, does anybody know what his blood group is?" the nurse asked with a tone of fake concern, "O-ve!" Iruka immediately answered "We don't have any more O-ve blood left in our blood bank. Is anyone among you an O-ve?" she asked hoping that the answer was a no so that 'the demon' would die of blood loss. But Itachi immediately stepped forward without even thinking twice and said "I am an O-ve!". The nurse reluctantly but immediately took him over to Naruto for the blood transfusion.

Itachi knew the consequences of this action of his if his clan ever found out, they would create a huge fuss about it saying that they were the strongest clan in all of the elemental nations, ELITES! And it was a crime to share an Uchia's blood with a lowly commoner like Naruto, but Itachi couldn't find any fucks to care about his clan's ranting since Naruto was just like Sasuke, a younger brother to him in almost all ways except blood, and so he would do anything to keep him safe.

The blood transfusion was done and they had him wrapped him in bandages, but it was too late as Naruto's heartbeat slowly decreased and then finally stopped, the life support machine attached to Naruto had stopped beeping and was letting out a long continuous high pitch sound indicating that he was dead Itachi, Kakashi, Yugao, Iruka and the Hokage had walked into the room and towards him and was looking at him completely heart broken. "I've failed you again sensei' thought Kakashi as he clenched his fingers into a tight fist out of pure rage as tears threatened to come out, the others were also seething with complete anger flooding KI throughout the entire room causing the doctors and nurses to suffocate under the pressure.

Everyone was so busy with their own thoughts and sorrows that they didn't notice Naruto being covered by a layer of silver light. A sudden burst of youkai filled with so much hatred and malice was what that caught everyone's attention. They all looked at Naruto to see that there was a silver layer of youkai covering his body completely, it grew brighter and brighter until all of them had to cover their eyes from the light. The light finally dimmed and faded away to reveal a fully healed Naruto with a new right eye and a new left arm.

Naruto was sleeping peacefully as the life support machine started to beep again signifying that his heart was beating and that he was alive. The five of them moved closer to Naruto and started examining his body to see that there wasn't a single scratch on his body anymore. "He looks so…. Peaceful" said Yugao as everyone had nodded in an agreement, "How?" was all that Itachi could ask at this moment as everyone else thought the same thing.

"There is only one explanation for this" Hiruzen said getting everyone's attention as he continued "Juubi…. The Juubi must have healed him to not let its host die, that is the only plausible explanation I could think of at the moment". Everyone else agreed to this as it was the only logical reasoning that they could come up with after this event.

"Alright, let him rest he's had a long and painful day today. Iruka you can go home and rest now, Neko you can go ahead and resume your guard duties for the night, and Itachi and Kakashi will stay here for the night to make sure that none of the hospital staff will try anything funny on Naruto." Hiruzen said with a slight amount of venom at the last part while looking at the doctors and nurses in the room. Everyone bowed and said "HAI!" to the Hokage as the three of them left, leaving Naruto in the safe hands of Itachi and Kakashi.


	10. Chapter 10: Apprentice

CHAPTER: - 10 APPRENTICE

Hey guys, I know it's been a really long time since I've last updated this series and I'm really sorry since I said that I would be uploading new chapters every day, some things had come up and for a while I had completely lost interest in writing for a while, but no worries because I'm back and I already have everything penned down till chapter 25 and all that's left is to get everything typed down, which is the biggest task. I'm not so fast at typing so it'll take me a while to get things typed down as the future chapters are really long… like at least 3k words, but I can proudly say that I'll at least upload 2 chapters a week if there are no hiccups on my side. So I really look forward to your reviews and thank you for following this series, I won't let you down, enjoy.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE OR ANY OTHER UNIVERSES.

Next day morning: -

Naruto woke up really fresh and enthusiastic thinking all that happened was a bad dream, that was until he noticed that he was in the hospital due to him visiting this place more times than he would like to. Kakashi and Itachi saw that Naruto was waking up and went up to him to see him tracing his right hand over his right eye and then over his left hand to see whether it was real or not.

"Itachi-ni, Kakashi-ni, what…. What happened after I passed out?" asked Naruto, and the next 15 minutes was spent by Itachi and Kakashi explaining everything to Naruto and was really surprised to see him take all this in very calmly, but then they understood that it was due to him experiencing things like this, things that no 9 year-olds should ever have to experience. This amount of maturity came purely through his struggles and pains he has undergone in these innocent 9 years of his life.

Both Kakashi and Itachi knew that Naruto always wore a mask around everyone, the mask of an idiot hiding this level of maturity from everyone except a few. Naruto wore a large smile on his face and asked the two anbu's "Can we leave, before these people try to kill me…. Again." Kakashi and Itachi was surprised with his question but none the less agreed and the three left to meet the Hokage.

At the Hokage mansion.

Hiruzen could be seen sitting behind a desk rubbing his forehead while worrying about Naruto when suddenly a knock was heard on the door, Hiruzen sat straight and pushed his worries aside for the moment as he said "come in!" with worry clearly audible in his voice. The door opened to reveal two anbu's with a Naruto in front of them sporting a very huge happy grin on his face. "Naruto!" Hiruzen called out purely surprised while getting up and walking towards him, "Hey Jiji" said Naruto as he walked into the room.

Hiruzen walked up to him and pulled him into a tight hug, "Too late to wish you a happy birthday now huh?" said Hiruzen while Naruto and him shared a small laugh while still in an embrace. "How are you feeling Naruto?" he asked looking at him with concern. "Like nothing's ever happened Jiji" replied Naruto giving him his signature goofy grin. "Were sorry Naruto that we couldn't be there before it all happened" apologised Hiruzen, Naruto just shook his head from side to side saying "No Jiji, I'm happy that all of you came and rescued me before they could kill me".

Hiruzen sighed in relief knowing that Naruto didn't hold any grudge against them or the village. He then looked towards Kakashi and Itachi and told them "get him something to eat and then drop him off at the academy", before either of them could answer Naruto had cut in "Actually Jiji, I wanted to ask you something related to that" Hiruzen nodded giving Naruto an affirmation to go ahead and so Naruto continued "Do you mind if I took a day off from the academy today?", Hiruzen instantly knew that Naruto wanted some alone time and told him that it was okay to skip today's classes.

Naruto immediately smiled and thanked the Hokage, Itachi and Kakashi and gave each one a hug and then left.

Naruto had already changed into his new clothes when he left the hospital, and hence Naruto ran towards the library to have some quiet time snice going back to his apartment was kind of risky plus he was afraid too. Naruto had snuck into the library from the back since the librarian wouldn't let him in. Naruto grabbed a random book from one of the shelves without even looking at it and took his favourite place in the library, a seat in the far corner of the library where no one would come and neither could anyone see him, that place was a total blind spot in the library.

Naruto was about to drift off into his own chain of thoughts, but suddenly out of the corner of his eye he saw the title of the book 'HISTORY AND CLANS OF KONOHA', intrigued by the subject Naruto had started reading through and committing it to his memory, but what caught his eyes the most was the last two clans written in the book.

The first was the Namikaze clan, 'This clan was known for their high level of intellect, almost reaching the level of a Nara, had un matched and unbeatable skills in weapons forging and weapon mastery, the members of the clan were so good that they specialised in all different kinds of weapons, ranging from swords, daggers, Bo-staff, archery, etc., etc.

This clan was also known for their amazing speed and was the fastest clan in the shinobi world and could go evenly matched against an Uchia or Senju in battle. The clan was wiped out when they tried to help the Uzumaki clan fend off their ambush during the 3rd shinobi war leaving its final and sole survivor of the clan Minato Namikaze, who had later become the Yondaime Hokage, he died after killing the Juubi no Ookami (The Ten Tailed Wolf) in a fierce battle'.

Naruto was clearly surprised by this revelation since he didn't know a clan like that existed. But what caught his attention the most was the next clan…. The Uzumaki clan. 'WHAT!' was Naruto's first thoughts, 'I…. belong to a clan.' Thought Naruto as he continued reading.

'The Uzumaki clan was one of the oldest allies of Konoha, they were present during the founding of Konohagakure. Uzumaki's were related to the Senju clan since they were close cousins. The Uzumaki's were known for their monstrously huge chakra reserves and fierce prowess in battle, but they were most feared for their prowess in fūinnjutsu. The Uzumaki clan lived in Uzushiogakure. They helped change the tides of the battle in favour of Konoha during the 3rd shinobi war, but was wiped out with the Namikaze clan during the war.'

Naruto was completely speechless with this knowledge, so he left the library and ran towards the Hokage mansion to confirm it with the old man, while silently hoping that he belonged to the clan.

\--x HOKAGE TOWER x--

Hiruzen could be seen sitting in his chair and reading an orange book while giggling very perversely, "Oh Kasumi-chan you're such a bad girl!" he said giggling again when suddenly Naruto came barging into the room unannounced screaming "Jiji! Jiji!". Hiruzen completely was caught off guard when Naruto came barging in but thanks to his muscle memory and fear of being caught, he instantly hid his book in his sleeve and sat up straight in a very rigid Naruto.

"Jiji! Jiji! I'm in a clan!" exclaimed Naruto while running towards the table, "Naruto who told you this?" Hiruzen asked him sternly, completely coming out of his previous stupor out of plain fear that he had found out who he was. "No one Jiji, I just went to the library to be alone for a while and I saw this book (shows Hiruzen the book he was holding), intrigued by it I started reading it. That was when I came across the Uzumaki clans name." he explained.

Hiruzen had slumped back into his chair sighing in defeat, he knew that the day that Naruto found out about his lineage would come sooner or later but he didn't expect it to come this soon. "Yes Naruto, you are the last surviving member of the Uzumaki clan. You get the Uzumaki clan blood from your mother's side" said Hiruzen. Naruto wasn't so surprised but asked another question "Is-is my mother…. Alive Jiji?" with a low voice, Hiruzen just shook his head from side to side indicating a no. Naruto just hung his head down in and looked at his feet.

Seeing this Hiruzen felt really bad and continued, "Naruto your parents loved you so much, in fact I've never seen any other parent so happy when they knew that they were going to have a child. You see Naruto you were born on the day the Juubi attacked the village, your parents died protecting you, a baby whom they loved with all their heart". Naruto looked up to the Hokage and smiled, a happy but mixed with a little bit of sadness and pain smile, Naruto nodded signifying that he understood.

"Now Naruto, you should understand that I cannot disclose to you who your parents are, both were very important people so, should I tell you about them and should that word get out then you would be targeted by many people from other villages" he explained while in Naruto's mind he was like 'Who were my parents? And how important were they if just knowing about them would put me in great danger?', instead of voicing his thoughts Naruto just nodded and agreed with him.

Naruto thanked Hiruzen and was about to leave when he remembered something and asked, "Jiji do you have any books on fūinnjutsu from which I can learn from? I figured if I am an Uzumaki I should start learning what my clan was known and feared for" he said with a huge grin plastered on his face. Hiruzen smirked and agreed as he thought 'The Uzumaki blood is very prominent in you Naruto, I know you'll be a great sealing grandmaster one day and I hope it is soon'. Hiruzen then took out a sealing scroll and a small book from it and handed it to Naruto saying "This is the very basics of fūinnjutsu Naruto, so come and meet me once you're done with this book and then I'll give you the books that your mother had left in my hands to give you". Naruto nodded and took the book with that big stupid grin still on his face. He thanked the Hokage and left to the library to return the book which he stole…. No, borrowed from the library.

Naruto was walking towards the library and he was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even notice the hateful glares that were aimed at him. 'So they did love me, I wasn't abandoned or unloved, they risked their lives to save me…. To protect the one that they loved, their precious person' he thought. That was when he understood that to save his precious people and the people of the village he needed to become strong, and so he made a promise that he would become really strong one day and would never go back on his promises, because that…. that was his ninja way!

Naruto had reached the library, snuck in through the back, returned the book that he had taken and took his favourite seat and had started reading the book which the old man Hokage had given him.

In the book it was written that fūinnjutsu is the most difficult and complex of all ninja arts, it requires a lot of patience, time and dedication to master this shinobi art. Fūinnjutsu is basically performed by writing kanji symbols on a paper using chakra infused ink. The stronger or higher the rank of the seal, the harder and longer is the seal array.

Every stroke of the brush should be perfect or else you might risk causing an error which will lead to disastrous situations like the seal blowing up in your face, or a tear in space and time (for supremely high level seals). Hence a seal master should have really good calligraphy skills, great memory and very strong chakra, that was why the Uzumaki's were considered the best due to their potent chakra.

Fūinnjutsu is a very versatile shinobi art, it can be used on the battlefield to subdue and kill the enemy, fūinnjutsu can also be used in medical fields to heal all major and minor wounds depending on the seal caster's rank and chakra. The seals used for medical ninjutsu require very little chakra compared to the chakra expended by a medical ninja on the battle field, the seals can be used to regrow the severed body parts of a person, sustain their body for weeks even if they are at a near death state, alter the DNA of a person (provided they have an excellent amount of medical knowledge), restore and modify organs.

But almost 95% of these medical seal techniques and arrays are exclusively known and available only for members of the Uzumaki clan, and the rest 5% being small minor medical seals which doesn't have much major use.

Naruto had memorised all of this in just the first read thanks to his photographic memory and decided to work on his calligraphy skills first since his handwriting wasn't that good. So he left the library and went to the best shinobi weapons store in the whole village, 'The Shinobi's Art' which was run by a man named Takeshi, now the reason that he came here was because Takeshi-san was the only shop keeper who would sell him all the required equipment's without scamming him or without any contempt, a really nice and kind old man if he says so himself since he one amongst the few people who didn't hate him for some God forsaken reason.

Naruto had reached the shop and walked in to see that no one was there, he was about to call out Takeshi-san's name when suddenly he heard a loud thud and so many other metal items falling onto the floor making loud clanking noises from the room which was at the back of the shop.

Naruto instantly ran into the room without a moment's hesitation only to find Takeshi-san on the floor. Naruto rushed towards him and helped him up, "Thanks kid" the old man said as Naruto started picking up the iron ingots, shuriken's, kunai's and scrolls and placed each items in their respective boxes and stacked them up on the shelves. "I'm getting too old for this" said Takeshi-san while laughing and rubbing his back, "Yeah you are old man." Said Naruto while cheekily laughing at the small blow to Takeshi-san's age, "HEY! I'm not that old you know Naruto! I'm only 68!" "yeah and that's old, old man" argued the two as they started laughing.

"You know you should find someone to help you with the store soon right?" Naruto asked sincerely, "Yes Naruto I should, but would want to work with me if they'll only get a minimum wage" The old man said sighing. Naruto felt bad for the Takeshi-san as he looked around the room only to find that they were in the shop's forge. Naruto couldn't understand why but he felt like the forge and the plethora of weapons in the store were calling out to him and the more he looked at the place the more his blood was boiling, boiling to learn about weapons forging and kenjutsu and this feeling was like an unquenchable thirst.

That was when Naruto had an idea and turned towards Takeshi-san as he asked "Hey, what if I was to tell you that I'm willing to work for you for minimum wages…. But as an apprentice and if you're willing to teach me weapons forging, only for the next 3 years though since I'll be graduating from the ninja academy and become a full-fledged shinobi of Konoha by then.", "Hmmm, then I would say Welcome to 'The Shinobi's Art' kid, but on one condition kid" he said, "What is it?" Naruto asked curiously, "You will have to stop calling me old man and start calling me Sensei!" Takeshi-san said, Naruto then gave very tiny thought to it as he said "Alright, thank you for taking me in as you apprentice…. Sensei". 'huh I could get used to that title' thought Takeshi as the two of them shook hands.

"Alright! So what brings you here Naruto?" Takeshi asked remembering that Naruto must have come to the shop for something, Naruto just smiled asked for 500 sheets of paper, 5 brushes and a litre of ink for him to practice his calligraphy. Takeshi-san was really kind enough to give Naruto all that he needed for half the price, he had all of it sealed into a small sealing scroll and gave it to him.

And as from where he got the money to buy these materials, he had asked the old man to slowly cut the money from his wages, since he couldn't afford them currently.

Naruto stayed and worked in the shop for the rest of the day getting familiarised with the shop for his duties. At the end of the day before he left Naruto was paid for today's work, but when he had received his pay he was shocked to see so much money being given to him for just one day's work. Sometimes he would end up doing 3 jobs in a day and would end up being paid only half of what he was paid today, it was at that moment that Naruto realised that he wasn't even paid properly for all the work that he has done all these years. Naruto then thanked his new sensei and left.

Naruto had to thank Iruka-sensei for beating his manners into him, when his stomach growled and decided to get something to eat from Ichiraku's since he hadn't eaten anything the whole day. After a few minutes of walking Naruto reached the place, moved the curtains and took a seat. "Oi Naruto! How are you and how come you didn't come by yesterday for your birthday?" asked Teuchi a little hurt. Naruto slightly winced at the question which didn't go unnoticed by Teuchi or Ayame as she walked out of the kitchen. "Naruto you can tell us anything, were family and a family helps each other", said Teuchi putting a stop to the turmoil in the silver haired boy's mind in weather to tell them or not, after a few seconds of deafening silence Naruto let out a long sigh and started "Well it's like………. (He tells them everything) …. And then the next thing I remember is me waking up in the hospital today morning.

Ayame half way through Naruto's story was crying with her hands covering her mouth, she ran towards Naruto knelt down in front of him and pulled him into a hug, while Teuchi-san had his hands clenched into fists and was gritting his teeth in pure rage while being so disgusted at the villagers for doing something so gruesome to such a young and innocent boy, but Naruto had assured them that he was okay and that he forgave everyone and then changed the painful subject by asking Teuchi-jiji to get him something to eat since he hadn't had anything to eat since morning.

After downing 7 bowls of ramen Naruto let out a sigh of content while patting his stomach. "Best food ever to be invented in the world I tell you" said Naruto with a smile, when he was about to get up and pay for the food Teuchi stopped him and said "It's alright Naruto, this one is on the house" "Are you sure Teuchi-Jiji?" Naruto asked with concern, "yeah, think of it as your birthday treat from us okay!" said Teuchi, Naruto thanked Teuchi and Ayame and left.

Naruto reached home and pulled out the small sealing scroll and unsealed all of its contents (yeah he had learnt how to do that from Takeshi-san.), and started working on his calligraphy skills. Almost an hour and half into it Naruto had perfected his calligraphy but still had almost 400 sheets of paper and 800ml of ink left with him, he knew that he would end up using them later on so it didn't really bother him as he resealed the leftover items. 'Looks like I'll have to collect the next book from Jiji tomorrow' thought Naruto as he meditated for a while and then went to sleep after covering the broken window in his apartment with some newspaper.


	11. Chapter 11: Rivals

CHAPTER: - 11 RIVALS.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE Naruto UNIVERSE, BECAUSE IF I DID THEN NARUTO WOULD HAVE THE RINNEGAN.

It's been two weeks since Naruto became an apprentice for Takeshi-san, but had only been asked to do the cleaning, arranging, taking stocks, attending to the customers and learning about all the different kinds of weapons, the feel and form of each weapon, their pros and cons. After learning about all these weapons Naruto's thirst for learning kenjutsu had only increased, the more he learnt about it the more desperate he was getting to start practicing but sadly he couldn't since a sword or even a basic tanto was too expensive for him to afford so he couldn't practice.

In these 2 weeks there was a lot of progress regarding his fūinnjutsu practice, the very next day after becoming Takeshi-san's apprentice Naruto had gone to meet the Hokage to get his new book on sealing and the look on his face was priceless when he found out that Naruto had learnt all the basic theories of fūinnjutsu and had also perfected his calligraphy in just a few hours, he even asked Naruto some questions and he had answered everything exactly the way it is given in the book. Hiruzen was surprised was an understatement, he could understand that Naruto was an Uzumaki and that he would be a natural when it came to fūinnjutsu, but even according to Uzumaki standards he was a prodigy.

Hiruzen just smiled and gave Naruto the first book for basic fūinnjutsu, it contained information on single kanji seals, what each kanji means and what it is used for, basic small storage seals and how to make your own chakra infused ink. Naruto took the book and left, and had returned after 4 days to get the second book for fūinnjutsu and has been learning that book so far, and that leaves us where we are now, to save some money for the store (and for practice) Naruto was the one supplying or making all the small basic storage seals and smoke screen tags. Finally, Takeshi-san took Naruto into the forge and had shown him everything, what it does and the basic things to remember before and during forging.

Naruto had sucked all the instructions given to him like a sponge and would watch Takeshi-san do the forging when he is free.

2 days ago Naruto heard that the Uchia clan was massacred by Itachi who had only spared Sasuke Uchia's life for reasons unknown. Sasuke is Naruto's rival, top of the class, an eye candy for the girls who would fawn over him all the time, amazing in taijutsu and all the basic ninjutsu's, Sasuke would whoop Naruto's ass any day and any time if challenged for a duel.

Naruto never saw Sasuke at the academy after the Uchia clan incident only to find out that he was admitted in the hospital and was in a coma after being put under a very strong genjutsu. He tried to visit his classmate/rival in the hospital but the staff wouldn't even let him inside the hospital. He tried sneaking in only to find out that there were ninja's guarding the Uchia boy's room all the time, and trying to get in through the window was also pointless since there was some kind of seal on it preventing him access into the room, but he still tried and almost got caught I the process.

Now the only thing the silver haired boy could do right now was wait until Sasuke regains consciousness and returns to the academy.

But Naruto still couldn't understand something and it's been bugging him ever since he found out about this incident, 'Why? Why did he massacre his whole clan? I mean he was so devoted to the village and his clan, he would practically do anything for them. So why?' was what was bugging Naruto.

\--x TIME SKIP- 3 YEARS LATER x--

And so life went on for the two rivals only that after his clan's tragedy Sasuke became even more broody and more distant towards everyone in the academy. He was usually silent before the incident but after the incident his silence and brooding went to a whole new level.

Sasuke never worked with anyone, never answered anyone, and always ignored everyone. Ever since the incident Naruto grew closer to Sasuke, saw him more than as a rival, as his best friend, as a brother, he was the only one who Naruto could relate to.

He lost everything, his parents, his whole family, hell even his own brother left him and ran away from the village and was marked as a missing nin. Sasuke knew what it felt like to be all alone, without any real family left for him now and Naruto could relate to that. But unlike Naruto who tried to make friends even though almost everyone pushed him away, Sasuke tried to isolate himself from everyone who wanted to be his friend and help him.

Sasuke was still the top of his class and Naruto was still the dead last since he always failed his exams thanks to the clone jutsu which he could never perform no matter what he tried, hence him being the dead last of the class. But that was the only place he lagged but he had made some really great progress in other aspects.

In these 3 years Naruto had finished 6 out of the 10 books of fūinnjutsu and the reason it took him 3 years was because each book was considerably harder and complex than the previous one, so Naruto took his time to thoroughly go through each book and learn and practise them till he could do it in a record breaking speed, time, precision and with his eyes closed.

Naruto learnt to make exploding tags, XXXL storage seals and scrolls, mediocre gravity and resistance seals, could even make his own chakra ink which was almost 10 times more potent than regular chakra ink, privacy and barrier seals and a lot more.

Right now Naruto was the one supplying the shop with seals and other things. Naruto is currently working on his seventh book which he had received from the Hokage yesterday and it was proving to be a great challenge, since it was by far the most complex book he had received.

Naruto had also completely mastered the art of weapons forging in these three years and was amazing at it and that's not all, Takeshi saw Naruto taking a really big interest to kenjutsu, so he gifted him two bokkens and a book on basic kenjutsu skills. Takeshi could only do that since selling any other book of a much higher grade to someone who is underage or not a ninja was illegal but Naruto was really happy with this and kept practicing after that and now he has high-gennin – low-Chunin skills in kenjutsu because that's how far a book will take you without a sensei.

Right now Naruto could be seen at the forge in the shop sweating like a fucking pig while working on his dual katana order, it was a long day and he was done for today in the store and was leaving after collecting his day's wage from Takeshi-san, "Think I'll head to Ichiraku's for dinner…. Like always" Naruto said to himself while chuckling and started walking towards it.

Naruto was 4,9" tall and was still shorter than most in his class right now, wore the same kill-me orange track suit, but his silver hair went all the way till his shoulders with 2 bangs on either side of his face that went up to his chin (just like Minato's but a bit longer and less spikey). He looked just like the Yondaime Hokage excluding the whiskers and the silver hair which was considerably less spikey than the former Hokage's.

'My graduation exam is in a month, and I am nowhere close in getting the clone jutsu right.' Naruto thought letting out a huge sigh. Naruto's chakra reserves were near Kage level now but pitifully held close to no chakra control even after years of meditation and constant practice causing him to fail all his exams so far.

Naruto had enough chakra control to do a transformation jutsu and a substitution jutsu but it wasn't enough to pull off a clone jutsu, hence all the clones that he made so far was sloppy and disfigured, hell! He couldn't even do it even with Iruka sensei's help.

As he reached he greeted them with a big smile, "Hey! Ayame-nee, Teuchi-oji san!"

"Hey! Naruto how are you doing? Working hard I see?" Teuchi greeted and asked. "yeah and I'm so hungry right now after working at the forge, and I'm also a bit tensed since my graduation exams are coming up."

"That's good Naruto, work hard and ace your graduation test and become a full-fledged ninja and we'll throw a party for you." Ayame said leaning on the counter and looking at him. "So, what would you like to have Naruto kun?"

"To start off I'll have 4 bowls of miso ramen please!" Naruto ordered, "alright 4 bowls of miso ramen coming right up!" Ayame said as she went in to get his order. After four bowls and another two bowls later Naruto was full and paid for the food but left a bit more extra for them without their knowledge and then left after telling his bye's.

Naruto wasn't stupid, he knew from a long time ago that Ichiraku's was going bankrupt since business wasn't going good ever since he started frequenting the place.

Once the villagers started noticing that the village pariah was visiting this shop almost on a daily basis the place had become a forbidden ground for most of the villagers, the only ones who would come to the stand were a few villagers, ninja's and some people who would come to the village for sightseeing.

Even then Teuchi and Ayame wouldn't leave him nor abandon him since he was family to the two of them and they never sold out on family. They kept him fed even when they had no money, so Naruto started saving up money and sending it to them anonymously, he knew that they wouldn't accept the money that he would give them so this was the only way that he could give it to them.

It wasn't anything much but this was he could at least help them out in some manner. They wouldn't tell him nor would they show in any manner that they were having problems to keep him from worrying. He knew that the Hokage would give them a siphoned for each and every bowl of ramen that he had eaten but even then that wasn't enough.

But even after all these things he never understood why the villagers were so cruel to him and the ones that were precious to him, and would try to hurt him, he couldn't figure out what was wrong all this time.

It was around this time that Naruto reached the back of the ramen stand and saw the dumpster where they dump their waste, that was when he remembered an old painful memory.

\--x FLASHBACK - 6 YEARS AGO x--

It was a normal day at work and Teuchi was closing the shop for the day, as always customers were very few and Naruto had left the stand around 3 hours ago.

Teuchi was fixing a clog in the sink when Ayame had gone to take out the trash. She was about to throw the trash away when she saw a bloodied and bruised hand sticking out of the dumpster, Ayame was frozen in place due to fear but finally found her voice to call Teuchi.

"O... O... O... Otou-san come here soon!" called Ayame with panic clearly heard in her voice, Teuchi walked out while wiping his hands on his apron when he saw Ayame just standing there. "What happened Ayame?" Ayame clearly out of fear didn't say anything but just lifted her hand and pointed her finger at the dumpster.

Teuchi turned around, squinted his eyes and looked carefully to see that bloodied hand sticking out of the dumpster, his eyes went wide as he slowly walked towards it and looked in only to see the hand as the body was covered in garbage.

Teuchi moved on bag to the side to see a boy, 'He looks to be around Naruto's….' that's when it dawned on him and he shouted "NARUTO!" while quickly pushing aside every bag out of the way and started to pull the silver haired boy out.

Ayame just shocked by the revelation ran towards her father and helped him pull Naruto out of the dumpster.

Once Naruto was out both Teuchi and Ayame started crying looking at Naruto's almost lifeless eyes, "A… Ayame(wheeze) ne-chan (wheeze) Teuchi oji-san(wheeze)"said Naruto between wheezes while a small smile adorned his tired, dirty and bloody face.

Teuchi lifted him and ran home while Ayame closed the shop in a couple of seconds and hurried after them. Naruto reeked of garbage and piss, so they gave him a quick wash, cleaned and dressed all his wounds.

Naruto had become unconscious on their way home so he technically didn't remember anything after that, he woke up the next day morning in some random room, 'where… am… I? Oh that's right I remember seeing Teuchi-jiji and Ayame-nee last night so I must be at their place, gosh I must have made them really worried.' He thought and tried to sit up when suddenly Ayame walked into the room to check on him.

"Otou-san he's awake!" she said aloud as she ran towards Naruto took a good look at him to see if he's alright, "Naruto-kun" said Teuchi as he walked into the room to see Ayame taking off the bandages that they had put on him last night, but to their surprise they saw that Naruto didn't have a single scratch on him as if his unknown attack last night had never even happened.

Naruto knew that they were very anxious to know what had happened to him last night so the next hour was spent with him explaining too them what had exactly happened to him last night, once he was done telling them how he was beaten, stabbed and pissed on last night Ayame cried and Teuchi was furious, but neither could have been more glad that Naruto was safe now.

\--x END FLASHBACK x--

Naruto winced and then a small smile had fallen on his face as he reminisced about that memory.

Naruto had reached the front door of his small apartment as he was lost in his own thoughts, he deactivated the security seals, walked into is apartment and then reactivated them. Naruto had to apply these seals to his home [if you could call it that (-_-')] since his apartment was broken into a few times, and due to the assassination attempts on him while he was asleep.

Now even an Anbu would find it really difficult to break into his apartment. Naruto sat down to do his regular meditation and was done almost 2 hours later, he then took out his new fūinnjutsu book and started reading it, around 3 hours later Naruto had put his book away, checked the security seals around his apartment once more as an extra precaution and went to sleep


	12. Chapter 12: A will to protect

CHAPTER 12: A WILL TO PROTECT.

Yeah sorry for the wait, but thanks for the reviews,

To, Shifter, thanks for the review I hope I don't let you down, and I'm really sorry for the late update.

To, Rinne-sahringan, yeah bro sorry but not happening, cuz "spoiler alert" Hiruzen still dies in this. And don't worry I seriously won't make Naruto crazy strong all of a sudden, he's going to have to face a lot of troubles in the future, so don't worry about that. And I'm sorry about the previous chapters (- _ -'). I recently went through them I felt really embarrassed of the way it was written, but I can promise you that it won't be like that anymore, and if I have enough time I'll rewrite the first few chapters.

Well a huge thanks to "Shifter" and "Rinne-sharingan" for reviewing this story, and please do so for this one and the upcoming one's also. And as for everyone who's reading this for the first time please review, favourite this story and follow it for updates on further updates.

Once again a huge thanks and hope you enjoy this chapter. "NOW ROLL IT!"

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Naruto universe, because if I did he wouldn't be so stupid.

"It's done! It's finally done!" exclaimed Naruto holding a katana in both his hand with a huge grin plastered on his face that expressed his utmost satisfaction at that moment.

He turned around and placed it alongside the other katana which was exactly the same as the one he was holding in his hands. He looked at these two swords with extreme bliss as they were his greatest work of art till date. He remembered the day he was given this project by Takeshi-san.

\--x FLASHBACK – 3 MONTHS AGO x--

"Hey kid!" called Takeshi-san as he walked into the forge causing Naruto to stop sharpening the kunai he was holding in his hand and give his full attention to Takeshi-san.

"Yeah, wassup sensei?" he asked letting Takeshi-san begin talking. "You see, a customer just came by and placed an order for a custom made dual katana. He didn't give me any specifications on how he wants it done, but told me that he wants the blade to be made out of chakra metal and as for the design he told me to go crazy with it, and he said that he wants it to be the best one that we can make."

Naruto noticed the smile on Takeshi-san's face as he said this and understood that he was excited to begin working on this new project so he hurriedly answered, "alright Takeshi-san, I'll finish sharpening this kunai and then you can go ahead and get stated wit-", "No Naruto!", Takeshi interrupted him and continued speaking.

"I want you to take on this project kid" Takeshi said while looking at Naruto with a firm and resolute gaze.

"Wait-what? You want me to take on this project?" Naruto asked with disbelief clearly visible on both his face and voice.

"Yes Naruto, I need you to take up this project, because this will be the final task that you will receive from me as your sensei in this forge, and I want…. No, I need this to be your best one, got it Naruto?" asked Takeshi patiently waiting for his reply.

"I-I mean; I would be honoured to take on my final project…. Sensei! And I will pour my heart and soul into this one." Naruto said with a deep bow and a firm voice. Takeshi smiled and nodded and about to take leave when Naruto asked something else.

"Oh yeah Takeshi-sensei, how do you want me to design the blade?", Takeshi looked at him with incredulity, but then that instantly changed when he understood that Naruto wasn't ignorant but was just…. Clueless.

When Naruto saw that expression which lasted for a split second he kind of panicked, and in a very panicky and flustered way he hurriedly spoke while waving his two hands in front of him, "No, no, no, no sensei, what I meant was that I don't have any clue on how to design the bade so I wanted your opinion on this matter."

Takeshi looked at him with a very understanding smile and then answered him "That's for you to decide Naruto, take this week to come up with a design and begin by the start of next week, I need you to get this project done by 3 months, that is before your graduation exam.", "Hai", Naruto replied dejectedly since he wanted some kind of suggestion or advice on this matter.

\--x FLASHBACK END x--

Naruto took the rest of the week trying to come up with a good design for the blade but at the end of week he ended up with a very simple yet elegant design for the blade. And finally begun forging his greatest creation, and it took him exactly 3 months to finish the swords and exactly the day before his deadline, because tomorrow was his graduation exam.

Naruto just stood there admiring his creations which was put up on a stand. The swords were really beautiful, the swords' blades were forged out of pure chakra metal giving them a really great edge and strength over other katanas.

Out of the two swords, one of them had a full shiny straight black blade, with a white handguard and the handle was white with shiny black diamond patterns that went all the way till the butt of katana, the butt cap of the katana was silver colour. This swords sheath was satin black with white blood splattered patterns on it, the two ends of the sheath had a silver ornament giving it a brilliant and elegant touch.

The other sword had a full shiny straight silver blade, with a black hand guard and the handle was black with silver diamond shaped patterns which went up to the butt of the sword, the butt cap of the katana was silver black in colour. This sword's sheath was white with black blood splattered patterns on it, the two ends of this sheath had a sliver black ornament giving it a brilliant and elegant touch just like the previous one.

Each blade had a dragon with wings carved on them which was roaring, and right next to the dragon were the word 'PAIN' (on the silver blade) and 'MISERY' (on the black blade), this made it look like the dragons were roaring out these words.

When both the blades were flipped, on the other side of the blade there was another dragon which looked same as the previous ones, but the difference was that these dragons looked like they were roaring out the words 'HEAVENLY SLAUGHTER' on both the blades.

Naruto just stood there grinning like a fuckin serial killer and continuously praised himself and nodded to each and every praise as if he was right on point.

Takeshi-san walked in to see Naruto like that and sweat dropped but then that looked changed to a look of satisfaction and understanding of a fellow blacksmith as he knew what that felt like.

He walked towards the blades and picked up the silver one first and gave a few thrusts and swings, put it back down, picked up the black one and did the same thing and kept inspecting both the swords.

"Hmmmmm, amazing feel, amazing balance, the designing looks really good and the colour code goes really well too and just by looking at it I can say that its really sharp. Overall you've done a really good job Naruto, as a matter of fact you've actually even overdone my expectations." He said smiling.

Naruto smiled, jumped and threw his left fist in the air shouting "Alright!!", and in the middle of his small celebration Takeshi-san started speaking up again.

"But there's just one problem" he said looking kind of confused.

"EEHHH?" Naruto landed on the ground and looked at him like as if Naruto was a complete idiot who couldn't understand anything.

"Why on earth did you name it 'HEAVENLY SLAUGHTER', ' PAIN' and 'MISERY'?"

"Oh-oh that? You see when I was finished with the swords and was about to only engrave the dragons, I noticed that both the blades had a blood-red glint whenever they were exposed to the sunlight, and the first thing I thought of was blood and how numerous people would fall under the might of these swords and so I named them 'HEAVENLY SLAUGHTER'."

"But then I thought that having the same name for both the swords were not right so I named them after the feelings and emotions that both the user and the victim would experience, hence the name 'PAIN' and 'MISERY'."

"But for most part I thought names sounded really cool…. And it also was a bit of pride and possessiveness that my swords might be named by someone else and that the person buying it might give it a stupid name." Naruto said getting a bit embarrassed for the last part.

"No Naruto I understand what you mean and I can relate to that, not just me but every single blacksmith out there can relate to your feelings of wanting to not let someone sully, insult or taint their best work. But its good, it's a nice overbearing name for a sword of this quality. It suits it really well." Takeshi-san said looking at the blood-red glint being emitted by the swords.

Naruto suddenly looked like as if he had remembered something and asked "Hey sensei, do you mind if I went home soon today and practiced for tomorrow's graduation exam?"

"Mn, it's alright you can go ahead, wouldn't want you failing your exams now would we?" Takeshi-san said letting Naruto go, but just before Naruto could walk out of the forge he called out to him again effectively stopping him in his tracks. "Oi Naruto, come meet me tomorrow once you pass your graduation exam, I have something for you." he said piquing Naruto's interest.

"What is it that you want to give me old…. I mean, sensei? Heh, hehe." Naruto asked laughing nervously at that small slip.

Takeshi let that small slip slide this time as he said "think of it as a small farewell and graduating gift" he said with a small smile.

Naruto bowed and took his leave to go home and train for his exam, (one which we all know he won't pass).

\--x FEW HOURS LATER x--

Naruto could be seen lying on his apartment floor panting while sweaty and tired after practicing so much.

'DAMN IT!' he thought to himself as he slowly got up, "Even after more than a 1000 attempts of trying to make a proper clone I couldn't do it! all of them turned out the same, sloppy and useless.", he said aloud standing up.

'Might as well go and get some ramen before practicing some more.' He thought to himself leaving for Ichiraku's.

Naruto returned home fully pumped up and energized after 6 bowls of ramen and some motivational words from Teuchi-jiji and Ayame-nee.

"YOSHA! Time to get my practice going in full throttle!" Naruto said feeling like a new person. After practicing again for few hours and failing every attempt at making a clone, exhaustion finally took over him and as he slept on the floor without even a futon.

It was morning now and Naruto could be seen running through the somewhat bustling streets of Konoha with his hair swaying behind him. "FUCK! I had to oversleep today of all days huh?" he cursed at himself while running towards the academy drawing some attention towards him.

"SAFE!" Naruto shouted sliding into his classroom with his hands in an 'X' shape just seconds before Iruka-sensei could walk in causing the whole classroom to erupt into a fit of laughter as he walked towards his seat a bit embarrassed.

"Oh good Naruto you were on time today with just a few seconds to spare." Iruka said as he walked in and stood at the teachers table.

"hehehe, Naruto laughed forcefully and let out a sigh 'that was too close for comfort' he thought to himself as he took his seat.

The papers were given out to everyone and the exam started right on time and everyone was busy writing the answers. Naruto had for a change written all the right answers in his papers and had it submitted and was waiting for his name to be called for the jutsu exam.

Naruto was really nervous about the jutsu test since that wasn't really his forte. Just as he was mulling over this Iruka had called out Naruto's name for the exams, Naruto got up from his seat took a deep breath and walked into the examination room.

Naruto walked into the room right next to the room which he was seated in to see Iruka-sensei and Mizuki-sensei seated behind a table, "Alright Naruto you know the drill, transformation jutsu first", Iruka said getting a nod from Naruto and watched him do a perfect transformation of the third Hokage.

"Good, now the substitution", the moment these words were said by Iruka Naruto vanished with only a log of wood in his place and he returned back by substituting himself with the log again.

"Excellent Naruto, now the clone jutsu" Iruka said with a worried tone and face which did not go unnoticed by Mizuki who was sitting next to him.

Naruto was really nervous but he took a deep breath calmed down and did the jutsu, 'poof', a sound was heard and smoke appeared and once the smoke had cleared out…. nothing was seen next to Naruto, but when they looked down they saw Naruto's clone only…. It looked like a human who had melted into a puddle and then it poofed out of existence.

Naruto felt a stinging pain in his heart and was dejected beyond measure but he didn't let any of that show on his face.

He in fact knew very well, more-so than anyone that he wouldn't be able to pass this test, but he had convinced himself and held onto that small miniscule hope of being able to create a clone out of pure luck to get himself to do his best, but in the end nothing worked out as he had wished for.

Mizuki had a small grin on his face while Iruka had let out a long dejected sigh before saying "I'm sorry Naruto, but you've failed."

Naruto just nodded, gave both his teachers a bow of respect and walked out, but before he closed the door behind him he took a small glance of the headband that was kept on the table and walked away feeling very melancholic and furious at himself for being useless.

Naruto had walked out of the academy and had been walking around aimlessly for the past two hours lost in his own thoughts ignoring everyone and their stares aimed towards him.

Tired of just walking around the whole time Naruto decided to head back to his apartment and sleep his worries for now.

He walked into his apartment and was about to sleep on the futon that was spread out on the floor when someone knocked on his door, Naruto sighed hoping that the person behind the door would just leave him be but the person behind the door kept banging on the door like his life depended on it.

"Haaaaa" Naruto let out a long sigh while looking at the sealing clearly annoyed by the unknown person.

He took long, reluctant heavy steps and finally managed to drag himself till the door but the banging never stopped till he opened the door, "Hai, Hai" Naruto said as he opened the door to reveal the last person that he would ever think of standing at his door step.

Naruto curiously looked at the person and asked "Mizuki-sensei what are you doing here?"

"I'm sorry that you failed your exams Naruto, but I'm here with some good news", Mizuki said with a smile. Naruto had a gut feeling that something was wrong and it's been bothering him ever since he saw Mizuki-sensei at his doorstep, but since he was his teacher he didn't give much thought to those feelings.

"What is it sensei?" he asked getting a small smile from Mizuki "You see Naruto though you failed, Hokage-sama and the council has been paying close attention to you for a while now and they feel that you have some talents that are very valuable to the village and so they've decided to give you a second chance."

"You mean Jiji sent you here!" Naruto asked clearly surprised.

Mizuki nodded and answered ignoring the Jiji part.

"Well what's this second chance about? What should I do?" Naruto asked sounding really hopeful.

Naruto was quite apprehensive at first but after Mizuki had mentioned the Hokage Naruto's mind was cleared of all doubts and had blindly believed him.

"It's a simple test Naruto, it's basically an infiltrate, search and retrieve kind of test.", "should you pull this off then you'll be put into the special ops division and become a full-fledged shinobi!" he said excitedly.

Naruto was pretty overwhelmed by this info but it was something that he had to believe, since there did exist a special division called the special ops forces that specialised in infiltration, information gathering, hostage rescue, search and retrieve missions.

But what he didn't know was that this was a division within the anbu black ops, and that he was being played by Mizuki for his own personal agenda and goals.

"Really sensei?",

"Yes, Naruto I mean it. I wouldn't lie to you now would I?" Mizuki said sweetly but with a grin that didn't exactly match his tone and words.

"Alright! Let's go get my headband sensei!" Naruto said totally pumped up. The left after Naruto locked his apartment and activated the security seals.

As they walked Mizuki smirked and had the look of a maniac which went completely unnoticed by Naruto.

\--x TIME SKIP IN A FOREST x--

Naruto could be seen holding a big ass scroll and waiting for Mizuki to arrive.

"Mizuki-sensei specifically told me to meet him here without drawing any attention to properly evaluate my scores. But where the fuck on earth is he? I've been here for almost 10 minutes now and he's still nowhere around."

"Tsk, and he gives 'me' a lecture on punctuality on those few days that I had entered the class exactly right after him.". "Meh, might as well see what's inside this scroll." Naruto said to himself before sitting down and going through the contents of the scroll.

\--x MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE HOKAGE TOWER x--

"Dispatch all Anbu, Jonins and Chunins immediately! We mustn't let that scroll leave the wall of Konoha! Keep Anbu's and Jonins at the entrance of the village and tell them to keep a look out for anyone who tries to force their way out of the village, and all Chunins and a handful of Jonins must remain within the village and must start a full through sweep of the whole village." Hiruzen said to the Anbu's in the room after sitting down in his chair with two tissues covered in blood sticking out of his nose.

'What have you gone ahead and done this time Naruto?' Hiruzen thought to himself as he pulled out a crystal ball out of one of the drawers to look for the silver haired boy.

\--x BACK AT THE FOREST x--

5 minutes into reading the scroll Naruto realised that it was a scroll with a few jutsu's in it, he saw a few really cool jutsu's but he couldn't understand the basis of most of them and how they are performed.

But what really caught his attention were two techniques the 'Shadow clone jutsu' and the 'explosion clone' jutsu, after reading the summary of the jutsu's he understood that the shadow clone jutsu was a more buffed up version of the clone jutsu that they taught him back at the academy.

While the explosion clone was basically exactly what the name implied, a clone that explodes on the command of the caster.

Naruto knew that these two jutsus were more beneficial to him than the rest that was given in the scroll, so he made up his mind and started memorising the two first before anything else.

Given Naruto's photographic memory memorising the basics, theory and the concepts of the two jutsu's barely took a minute and he rolled the scroll back up and stood up to practice the two new cool jutsu's he had just learnt.

After mulling over his choices Naruto decided that his best choice right now was the shadow clone since he needed some time extra time to be able to get the explosion clone right, and so he began his practice, but little did Naruto know that the two jutsu's that he had memorised and the one he was going to practice were forbidden techniques that only a handful of ninjas that he could count in just one hand knew.

Just a couple of minutes later Naruto had completely learnt how to execute the jutsu properly and was about to shout out in happiness and excitement of making his first perfect clone when someone from behind shouted at him.

"NARUTO! What are you doing with that scroll? GIVE IT TO ME NOW BEFORE SOMEONE SEES YOU WITH IT!" Iruka bellowed with his voice indicating that he was in a state of total panic.

"Oh! Iruka-sensei, hehehehe, did I do well and pass?" Naruto asked him inexplicably happy and satisfied, which served to confuse the Chunin.

"Iruka remained clueless and speechless for a few seconds before finally asking, "What do you mean by 'Did I do well and pass'?"

"Well Mizuki-sensei said that if I retrieved this scroll from the Hokage tower, I would pass and would be placed within the special ops division, and I believed him since he said that he was sent by Hokage-jiji himself." Naruto said truthfully word for word causing a frown to form on his face.

Iruka was about to think about something when he heard the sound of a fan coming towards them and roared "NARUTO, GET DOWN!" and he pulled Naruto to the ground along with himself to see that they had barely dodged a windmill shuriken that almost cleanly took their heads off.

"Tsk, looks like the demon brat sold out on me." Said Mizuki standing on top of a tree branch behind Naruto and Iruka with another windmill shuriken on his back.

"Mizuki, how could you do this!" Iruka asked looking at him with contempt when he figured out that Mizuki had used Naruto, his younger brother in everything but blood for a sinister scheme such as this.

"Isn't it obvious Iruka? I made him steal the scroll of sealing so that I can have it and let him take all the blame for it.", "I had originally planned to take the scroll, peacefully leave the village and let this… this vile creature take all the blame for it.

"But then you had to come along like a thorn in my plan. Well it doesn't matter, all that I have to do is kill you and leave with the scroll, then someone will find the demon next to your corpse and he will instantly be blamed for everything, and if he's lucky all he'll get is a death sentence." Mizuki said slowly reaching for the huge shuriken on his back.

Mizuki took out the shuriken and threw it, it flew straight for Iruka but at the last moment curved and changed its trajectory heading towards Naruto.

Not wanting to waste another second Iruka shot forward and placed himself between Naruto and the shuriken.

Naruto had closed his eyes and had prepared himself to be impaled by it when he saw the shuriken heading towards him, but for some unknown reason he never felt any pain…. Or any sensation as a matter of fact.

He opened his eyes to see Iruka in front of him, Iruka was wincing in pain and Naruto could see that as clear as day, he knew that Iruka had taken the blow for him and the only three words that came out of his mouth was, "Iruka-sensei…. Why?"

"I'll never…. let you hurt him! Mizuki!" Iruka bellowed as he pushed Naruto aside. "Naruto, run, fast! Escape with the scroll", Iruka roared him.

Naruto was frozen in place out of the fact that Iruka was hurt because of him but the moment he looked into his sensei's eyes he knew that he couldn't just lay on his ass there the whole time. So he did what Iruka told him to do, he grabbed the scroll and fled.

Iruka smiled and was relieved that Naruto listened to him and left, but Iruka didn't know that Naruto had actually only hid bend a tree that was just a couple of meters in front of him.

Iruka struggled and turned around to see Mizuki looking at him with disdain, "The demon abandoned his sensei and fled huh? Typical of low-life like him.", Mizuki said with a tone that mocked Naruto.

Naruto who was standing behind the tree and eavesdropping on their conversation looked at his hand as he closed it into a fist so hard that his knuckles looked white and shut his eyes as hard as he could out of the frustration that he was completely useless and powerless to save Iruka-sensei, he believed that he was more of a burden who weighed him down than being someone who could actually assist him.

"Tell me Iruka, why do you protect the demon? Didn't you to hate him just like everyone else in the village did? You know that he holds the ten tailed wolf within him! The demon that killed your parents and friends 12 years ago, don't tell me you've forgotten? Then why do you still insist on saving him?", Mizuki asked, really curious to know his answer.

Naruto who had his eyes shut suddenly opened them up as if he was electrocuted. 'Even Iruka-sensei hates me? So was all this a lie? And what is this about me containing the ten tails within me? Is that why the villagers hat me so much? But why? Why me? What's going on?" Naruto bombarded himself with so many questions that his mind started going into a frenzy. He felt like everything he knew and believed so far in his life was a lie and as if the world around him was collapsing.

"That's right I hated him! Hated him more than anyone in the whole village did!" Iruka said snapping Naruto out of his confusion and almost causing him to have a breakdown, but before anything could happen Iruka continued.

"But, that was back then when I was young and stupid, a few years after I joined the academy as a teacher Naruto joined, and I had a complete and total biased opinion of him, but it was my profession that allowed me to maintain a calm head at all times and treat all my students equally."

"And then slowly I began to understand the small boy that the whole village called 'demon'.", "He was someone who always failed his test, but he tried his best to make as many friends as possible only to be pushed, shoved and ignored by everyone of his age except for 4 people."

"I kept watching him from the shadows only to see how he pulled pranks on everyone just to get some attention, to get someone to speak to him even if it was to scold him, I saw the amount of joy he felt every time somebody noticed him or scolded him, the joy of being noticed."

"He reminded me of myself when my parents had died, just looking to be noticed and listened to. Then from that moment my felling for him changed, from hatred to concern for the silver haired boy."

"That's when I knew that I had lived a life full of lies and hatred for so long that I couldn't…. No, I wouldn't look beneath all that skin and bones to understand a person for who they are and not what others make them out to be."

"Then one fine day when Naruto had slept in class I woke him up only to find all that amounts of fear and panic in his heart with just that one moment of eye contact that we had. I went along with him only to find out the amount of pain, misery and sadness that he had been going carrying in his heart all those years."

"Slowly my feelings for Naruto changed to love, the kind of love a father has for his son, the kind an elder brother has for his younger brother. I saw that no matter what happened, no matter how bad the people hurt him, hated him or disregarded him, he never changed, and forgave everyone."

"He has a pure heart that doesn't hold on to any kind of negativity nor does he hate anyone in this village, rather he strives to be accepted and loved by everyone. That's why… that's why I'll protect him even if it means that I have to die here and now!" Iruka said with a gaze that looked like he wouldn't weaver even if the whole world came crashing down on him.

Naruto felt like a major idiot for losing his shit like that a while ago, but right now his mind was clear and he could think straight. He felt like shit for doubting Iruka-sensei, one of the few people who acknowledged and cared for him.

Mizuki's face expression slowly changed from curiosity to annoyance to disgust. "Tsk, you disgust me Iruka, with your love for the demon spawn. Well since you care so much about him I'll make sure that you will meet him in the afterlife!" Mizuki said with so much disgust in his voice, before lunging towards Iruka to end it.

"NOOOOO!" Naruto screamed as he ran as fast as he could and stood in-between Iruka and Mizuki successfully causing Mizuki to stop in his tracks.

"I won't let you hurt Iruka-sensei, I will protect him!" Naruto said letting out a small growl.

"So, the demon returns to protect its protector, just so pitiful. What can a dead last of a class like you do to a high Chunin like me?" Mizuki asked arrogantly.

"I'm a level 6 fūinnjutsu specialist, but touch my sensei once…." Naruto said before putting his fingers in a cross shaped hand seal and shouting 'shadow clone jutsu'), "and I'll promise you that I'll return that a thousand times over!" said a 1000 clones together.

There were thousands of Naruto's everywhere, on the tree branches, hanging onto the trees and on the ground surrounding Mizuki. Naruto performing this jutsu, a Jonin level forbidden jutsu on such a large scale caused Iruka's jaw drop to the ground and Mizuki to shiver in fear.

Out of that fear Mizuki tried to jump Naruto, but to his luck all the 1000 clones ganged up and did a huge number on him. All the clones poofed out of existence causing a huge smoke screen to form around them, but Naruto took this opportunity to pull out a chakra and body suppression seal from the seal on his chest and charged towards Mizuki to catch him off guard.

But, by the time Naruto had reached next to Mizuki, the smoke had cleared off to reveal a Mizuki who was twitching and had a swollen face, blue eyes and a broken lip.

Naruto sweat dropped at that sight and was arguing in his mind whether or not there is a need to put the seal on Mizuki, but in the end he decided to be extra cautious and activated the seal after putting it on him. Now that Naruto was sure that Mizuki wouldn't be able to do anything he walked towards Iruka and sat next to him.

"Hey Naruto come here for a second would you?" Iruka asked causing Naruto to take a seat right in front of his sensei.

Iruka asked him to close his eyes for a few seconds and Naruto complied, he felt something being tied onto his forehead and when he opened his eyes he noticed that Iruka was without a headband on his forehead.

"Congratulations Naruto, you pass!" Iruka said causing Naruto to scream a loud 'Yeah!' while pumping his fist into the air.

Iruka had called for backup and once they had arrived they removed the seal on Mizuki and took him into custody, while one of them healed Iruka and took both the teacher and the student to the Hokage's office.

Once there Iruka had explained everything to the Hokage, even though he had seen everything through the crystal ball (something Iruka and Naruto didn't know about).

But what had surprised them was the fact that Mizuki had escaped and fled the village when they were escorting him to the prison, the Hokage sighed and let Iruka and Naruto leave, but before they left Hiruzen turned to Naruto and gave him a look which meant 'Don't you dare tell anyone!', to which Naruto just cheekily grinned and nodded before taking off to his apartment really excited about the fact that he was a ninja now.

'A lot happened today' Naruto sighed and made a mental note to go meet the old man Hokage tomorrow after his team selection, and turned in for the night.


	13. Chapter 13: The Truth

CHAPTER 13: THE TRUTH.

**(A/N: Really sorry for the late update guys, but I've been going through a lot these days now, I had a lot of anxiety issues and I went into depression, it was rough this past one month, though it was hard I really wanted to finish the story so I got typing and its finally done now. I'm kind of ok right now so I'm gonna keep posting those new chapters and continue this story, I've got a lot of stuff planned for this fanfic, and if I'm gonna see through it all the way (which I will btw) it'll go up to at least a 1000 chapters. So I hope all of you are looking forward to it, and as usual, please leave a comment on how this chapter was, and I'll try update more frequently and regularly. Now HIT IT!!)****_DESCLAIMER: I don't own Naruto, just some of the characters that I make up._**

Naruto woke up when the first rays of sunshine hit his eyes through the window. Naruto rubbed his eyes and woke up remembering yesterday's eventful evening, he grinned and looked at the headband that was kept next to his alarm clock.

It was all smiles for Naruto until he remembered what Mizuki had told last night.

He frowned, he was…. Angry and hurt. He was angry because he was blamed and accused of an incident that he had absolutely no control of, heck it was not like he wanted that to happen to him, and it wasn't like he wanted everyone to hate him.

He was sad because almost everyone close to him knew and no one ever told him. It wasn't right that he had to find out this way. The people that he trusted and believed in the most never told him anything. He felt wronged.

He wanted answers and he knew that the only one that can give him some answers was the old-man Hokage and so he would go ask him first after calming down a bit, rather than losing his cool and lashing out at everyone else.

Naruto stood up walked into the bathroom, brushed, took a bath, put on his regular clothes along with his new leaf ninja headband and got out of his apartment, before he left he took in a deep breath and masked his feelings with a good smile and left for the academy for his team placements.

Once at the academy, as usual kids ignored him and parents were whispering to each other while pointing out at him and giving him some not so approved glares, and as usual Naruto couldn't find enough fucks to care about them so he just ignored them and walked into his classroom.

In his classroom it was a whole different story, as usual all the girls were fawning over Sasuke by crowding around him, squealing and telling him how great he is, while Sasuke on the other hand just ignored them and didn't care about anything much around him.

Naruto walked in and his eyes met with Sasuke and they had a small stare down with some imaginary lightning shooting out from both of their eyes and fighting for dominance.

After a few short seconds the two stopped and looked away from each other and Naruto left for his seat with his shoulder length hair lightly swaying behind him. Naruto felt the murderous glares of all the girls in the class (except one) directed at him as he took his seat, but feigned ignorance at it and sat down like nothing ever happened.

He knew that arguing with those fan girls would get him nowhere since it was a losing fight. It's a fight in which he cannot hope to win with logic, reason or wits so he chose to ignore them rather than get bullied and beat up by some fucked up girl.

When Naruto looked at the crowd of fan girls, the one who stood out the most was a pink haired girl named 'Sakura Haruno', you can call her as Sasuke's number one fan girl. Naruto 'thought' he liked her at one time and then asked her out once when she was alone to avoid getting embarrassed in front of others.

But he got rejected without even a second's worth of hesitation and she even scolded him for asking her out by telling 'who would go out with a dead last loser like you Naruto?'. Sure he was kind of hurt that day when she told him that, but he found out that he didn't actually like her but it was just her pretty looks that caught his attention because he didn't feel any emotional pain, anger, or longing that everyone says that love brings when someone gets rejected.

So he politely apologised to her for the inconvenience and left without saying another word and that had an effect that even he didn't expect, because the next day Sakura had called him aside and apologised for being rude to him after she rejected him. Naruto accepted the apology and asked her if they could just be friends and Sakura accepted.

Since that day he and Sakura had been friends and he ended up taking a huge liking to her as his sister.

Naruto was about to look around the class when Iruka walked in causing everyone to return to their seats and the whole class to go silent.

"Ok first of all I would like to congratulate all of you for passing your graduation exams, and seeing this its makes me proud to have been your sensei for these past 3 years."

"Now that all of you are shinobi of the leaf village, you should know that each and every one of you have a lot of responsibilities on your shoulders and you should be a lot more responsible and mature in the ways you handle matters and give it your all from the start to become exceptional shinobis."

After that introductory and motivational speech everyone in the class except for a few gave a loud cheer and 'YEAH!'.

"Alright! Now that that's out of the way I'll call out the teams and their members, so be quiet and pay attention since I'll only say this once."

"The teams are, team-1……… Team-7 is Sasuke Uchia, Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno and your teacher will be Kakashi Hatake".

Once the names of the members of team 7 was read out Sakura had jumped up from her seat threw her fist into the air and loudly shouted "YEAHHH!!!!!" since she was extremely excited about being in Sasuke's team.

Seeing Sakura behave like that was within Iruka's expectations so he didn't pay much attention to her and just continued calling out the teams.

"Team-8 is Kiba Inuzuka, Hinata Hyuga, and Shino Aburame. Your teacher is Kurenai Yuhi". Naruto turned his head and looked at Hinata for a few seconds, she felt like someone was looking at her and turned to find that person only to meet Naruto's gaze on her.

Instantly Hinata became as red as a tomato, looked away and started fidgeting with her thumbs. 'Hinata-chan is as cute as always, but she always acts like this whenever she sees me, does she hate me too like the rest? But then why is she always so nice to me if that's the case?'.

Naruto had these thoughts the moment Hinata behaved the way she did just now when she saw him. Naruto always thought that Hinata hated him just like everyone else did but he couldn't understand why she was always so nice and supportive towards him.

Every time Naruto sparred with anyone in the class for taijutsu training Hinata would cheer him on even when everyone else in the class would cheer for his opponent. Naruto would notice all these things even when others didn't since he always observed his surroundings very keenly.

At first he thought that he was overthinking stuff but then when he noticed this and lots of other things about Hinata more frequently he grew more certain and more confused as to why Hinata was really nice to him.

Just as his thoughts could go any further Iruka continued reading out the team names. "Team-9 is still in circulation and team-10 is Ino Yamanaka, Shikamaru Nara, and Choji Akimichi your teacher is Asuma Sarutobi."

Naruto looked at Shikamaru who just sighed and said "Troublesome" to which Naruto just chuckled.

"Ok now that's done everyone will meet your teachers and will follow them. All the best!" Iruka said as he left the class room, a few seconds after he left the teachers walked in and called out their respective teams and left for their respective training grounds. All teachers except team 7's.

Naruto took a glance at his teammates only to see Sasuke as broody as ever and Sakura fawning over him and constantly trying to strike up conversations with him with all of them ending in a failure.

Naruto gave out a small chuckle and then pulled out his fūinnjutsu book and started reading it while leaning back and putting his legs on the table.

Two hours passed by just like that and Naruto was still reading his book, Sasuke was just sitting there with his eyes closed and his legs on the table looking all cool and Sakura was just sitting there getting more furious by the second.

Sakura was finally out of patience and snapped. "WHERE IN THE ACTUAL FREAKING HELL ON EARTH IS OUR SENSEI?" Sakura asked loudly. Sasuke finally opened one eye and had a displeased look on his face since their sensei hasn't showed up yet and Naruto finally put his book away got up and started walking towards the classroom entrance.

"Naruto, where are you going?" Sakura asked him "I'll be back in a few minutes Sakura" Naruto said as he walked out of the class, and just like he said a few minutes later Naruto returned, but only he had a bucket full of water and some very thin string in his hand.

Naruto had a very evil mischievous smile on his face as he thought 'this is going to be your punishment for being late Kakashi-ni'. Both Sasuke and Sakura noticed this smile on his face and shuddered a bit knowing well what he, Naruto Uzumaki or even well-known throughout the village as the 'Supreme King of Pranksters' was planning.

Kakashi finally decided to walk in almost half an hour later, only to see Naruto Sasuke and Sakura standing a couple of feet away from the door with a smile on their faces, especially Naruto who had a very evil one.

Kakashi instantly jumped back a little after pushing the door wide open feeling something over his head, and once he landed he noticed a duster falling on the floor he was about to let out a sigh of relief only to feel a bucket of cold water poured on his head drenching him completely.

Sasuke smirked while Naruto and Sakura laughed their asses off while looking at Kakashi. After 10 seconds of heavy laughing Naruto finally calmed down and said "That's what you get for coming two freaking hours late!".

Kakashi sighed in defeat and asked the three of them to meet him at the roof top and disappeared in a poof of smoke.

"Damn it! That was a shadow clone!" Naruto said loud enough that the other two in the room heard it and revealed surprised expressions since they never knew about shadow clones.

Naruto obviously knew about the shadow clone jutsu thanks to the scroll of sealing that he had 'unknowingly' stolen from the Hokage's office last night, which the other two in the room obviously didn't know.

Naruto was kind of disappointed that he didn't get the real one but was still satisfied that he was able to make one of Kakashi's clones fall into his trap, since it's not like everyone can make a Jonin level ninja clone or the real one fall into a silly trap like this one.

While Naruto was still kind off down Sasuke took the initiative and started walking towards the door indifferently with Sakura following behind him. Though Sasuke acted all cool and indifferent on the inside he was actually grinning and was really satisfied with the result of Naruto's prank.

Naruto saw this and followed the two of them while rubbing his hair thinking what to do next after this.

\--x ACADEMY ROOF TOP x--

As the three reached the roof top they saw Kakashi holding and reading a small orange book in one hand while giggling, this was the kind of giggle that gave Sakura the Hebei jibe's.

Kakashi looked up from his book and asked the three of them to sit down while putting away his book.

"Alright I want you to introduce yourselves, tell us your name likes, dislikes and dreams." Kakashi said motioning his hands at Sakura signalling her to start.

"Sensei, why not tell and show us how we introduce ourselves so we can do it right?" Sakura asked genuinely.

"Ok fine. My name is Kakashi Hatake, I have many likes and dislikes, my hobbies wont interest you, and as for my dreams…. You don't need to know." Kakashi said with an eye smile.

'WHAT THE HELL! All we got was his name!' thought the three gennin as they sweat dropped especially Naruto who also had black likes rolling down his forehead.

"Ok, you go first" Kakashi said point at Sakura.

"Oh me? Ok, my name is Sakura Haruno, I like…. (looks at Sasuke and giggles), I dislike perverts, my hobbies are…. (looks at Sasuke and giggles again), as for my dream…. (looks at Sasuke and squeals).

Every one sweat dropped and had a deadpanned look after hearing Sakura's dreams.

"Alright orange boy your turn" Kakashi said looking and Naruto, "Sure, name's Naruto Uzumaki, I like ramen especially Ichiraku's, and a few precious people. I dislike liars, fake people and stupid people who judge really quick. My hobbies are training, forging new weapons and practicing my fūinnjutsu and playing pranks on people." Said Naruto with a huge grin at the last line causing Kakashi's visible eye to twitch, knowing that he meant that as a jab to his pride. Sakura started giggling at that small hidden innuendo while Sasuke let out a barely audible 'humph' while smirking. "And my aim is to become Hokage and make all the people in the village accept me." He said with determination in his voice.

"Ok, broody your turn" Kakashi said causing Sasuke to glare at him a little before continuing "my name is Sasuke Uchia, I have very few likes and lot of dislikes, I especially dislike the weak who don't do anything to become strong and the fan girls who waste their time fawning over me instead of training. My hobbies are to train in the ways of my clan and my dream…. No, my ambition is to kill a certain someone", said Sasuke with a low voice in the end.

'Ok, so I have a naive fan girl, a sly realist and a pessimistic brooder whose hell bent revenge. This is going to be interesting.' Thought Kakashi as he looked at them.

"Alright listen up, meet me at training ground 7 at 7:00am tomorrow for your first assignment and remember, don't eat your breakfast unless, you want to see what you ate in the morning again, ja-ne." Kakashi said as he shushinned out of the place while sending shivers down the spine of the three genins thinking about tomorrow's assignment.

Sasuke stood up and started walking away to start training for tomorrow's assignment but then Sakura looked at him and asked him "Sasuke-kun do you want to go out-" "No!" Sasuke rejected her even before she could even finish her sentence causing her to feel let down and freeze right at that spot.

'Ah, as always she gets rejected, just think about before Sakura, Sasuke just said that he doesn't like fan girls who waste their time fawning over him instead of training. LOOK AT THE SIGNS SAKURA! LOOK. AT. THE. FREAKING SIGNS! Naruto thought to himself while sighing, (pfft yeah, your one to say that Naruto!).

"Go home and practice for tomorrow's assignment Sakura" Naruto told her while giving her a pat on her shoulder as he walked away.

"haaaa, guess later then" Sakura told to herself as she left the place.

While Sakura was let down about this Naruto on the other hand was looking forward to that reward that Takeshi-san had promised him. Once he collected his reward for passing he would then go and meet the Hokage for an explanation for everything.

\--x AT THE WEAPONS STORE x--

Naruto walks into the store to see Takeshi-san sitting at the counter with his head down almost dozing off, a mischievous thought and an equally mischievous smile had burst into Naruto's head. Naruto walked closer to the counter and then shouted, "HELP! SOMEBODY! TAKESHI-SAN'S SHOP'S GETTING ROBBED!".

"HUH! WHO IS IT? WHO DARES TO ROB MY STORE?" Takeshi-san roared after being startled awake by the unknown person who called for help. He was holding a Bo-staff and was constantly looking left and right searching for the thief.

Meanwhile Naruto who was standing at the opposite side of the counter couldn't take it anymore and started laughing hysterically with small drops of tears at the corners of his eye for laughing so much.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OMG I can't take this anymore kill me before I die of laughter!" Naruto said going crazy. Takeshi-san saw this and took his Bo-staff and smacked Naruto right in the head with it and spoke "STINKIN BRAT! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOURE DOING SCARING THIS OLD MAN LIKE THAT? DO YOU WANT ME TO DIE OF AN HEART ATTACK?".

"ow, hey chill it's just a joke, and you should be happy that it was me, coz if it was someone else you would have already been robbed. You shouldn't sleep during work like that." Naruto said justifying his mischievous actions.

"sigh, what am I gonna do with you Naruto?" Takeshi-san said rubbing the back of his head while looking at a grinning Naruto who was rubbing the huge lump on his head.

"Oh yeah check this out!" Naruto said enthusiastically pointing towards the head band on his forehead. "Yo, looks like you're a genin now huh Naruto? And so as promised here's the reward." Takeshi-san said bending down and putting something on the table that was covered in cloth.

Naruto was confused at first but he stood in front of that item and removed the cloth to reveal the last thing that he expected to receive as his reward "Sensei this…." Naruto said with his eyes still on it. It was two katanas, not just any katanas but his 'Heavenly Slaughter' katanas.

"I know what you're thinking Naruto, let me explain. There never was a customer that asked for the best katana that we can make, it was something that I wanted to give you all along. I thought of making one on my own and gifting it to you but then there is no greater feeling than using the sword that you yourself had made."

"That's when I made up the plan of making you create your own sword and gift it to you during your graduation. That was why I specifically said that it has to be your most fine work ever. And you didn't disappoint, in fact you even overdid my expectations."

"So here, these are rightfully yours." Takeshi-san said lifting the two swords and handing it to Naruto. Naruto didn't reject the swords; he took it whole heartedly. The day that he had finished making these swords was the worst day of his life since he really didn't want to part with this beautiful work of art. He wanted to make the swords his own.

He knew the kind of effort that he had put into these katanas, only the best items that were available in the entire Fire Nation was used to make these. He knew how expensive these were. If he sold these he could live a very luxurious life at least for the next 5 years, that's how good these katanas were.

Naruto kept looking at them for the next few minutes and then finally looked at Takeshi-san to see him smiling at him, Naruto finally nodded and bowed deeply to him and said "Sensei, thank you for everything in these past three years, for all the knowledge that you have passed down to me and for taking care of me, I'll never forget this in my life."

"Hahahaha, it was my pleasure Naruto, besides everyone would want to take in a good capable disciple, and you were mine. And besides this place is always open for you anytime, and if you want to repay me don't forget to keep supplying those high quality seals that you make." Takeshi san said with a big smile.

"Mn, I will" Naruto replied with a smile, and then the teacher and student duo started sharing a laugh. Naruto spent the next one hour in the store before taking his leave to the Hokage's office.

\--x AT THE HOKAGE'S OFFICE x--

Hiruzen was now sighing for at least the 100th time today while looking at the huge stack of paper work that is sitting on his desk after the Mizuki incident, all of a sudden a knock was herd on the door, "Come in!" Hiruzen said happily, thinking that he could get a small break from all this work.

Naruto walked into the room to his surprise since he hadn't expected to see the silver haired boy until evening. But what caught his eye the most was the two katanas that were strapped onto his back in an 'X' shape. The two katanas were obviously made for a fully grown adult and it looked kind of big on Naruto's back, but never the less looked really cool.

"Hey Jiji how are you? How's the paper work going along?", Naruto asked grinning.

"I'm fine, not so good, and where did you get those katanas from?", Hiruzen answered and asked.

"Oh these, remember I told you that I was working on my final assignment given to me by Takeshi-san, for a customer".

"Mn" Hiruzen replied to his question.

"Well these were my assignment, and it looked like I was the customer.", Naruto said and then he set out to explain the whole ordeal to Hiruzen.

"I must say Naruto you've impressed me with this. These swords look really amazing, and the name is just overkill, but it really suits the sword.", Hiruzen said while examining them.

"Well duh! These babies are the finest swords that I have made so far, and they look really cool so they should have an equally amazing name."

Hiruzen took a few swings and thrusts with the sword and was extremely satisfied with it. "I can confidently say that this is one of the best swords that I have held so far. And this is coming from a person who has even held the Second Hokage's 'Thunder God Sword'!" Hiruzen said getting a huge smile from Naruto.

"Hey Naruto can I add 2 seals on this sword for you?" Hiruzen asked getting a confused look from Naruto.

"Sure, but which seals?" Naruto asked really curious.

"Oh nothing much, just an SS rank reinforcement seal and a chakra control seal." Hiruzen said indifferently getting an extremely shocked reaction from Naruto.

"J-J-Just an SS rank reinforcement seal?" Naruto asked sweat dropping at that statement of the old man.

An SS rank seal is really hard to create, only rank 8, rank 9 or rank 10 seal masters can make these level seals and an SSS rank seal can only be created by the ultimate grandmaster level fūinnjutsu experts, and that's a rank that comes after rank 10.

The only ever recorded fūinnjutsu grandmasters are the previous 6 heads of the Uzumaki clan and they were legendary experts, just their fūinnjutsu was enough to end a whole war faction in a few minutes. This was one of the reasons why the Uzumaki clan was targeted by the other 3 nations during the war, because they threatened the existences and the victory of the other 3 nations during the warring periods.

Nevertheless, Naruto didn't reject the idea of having the old man put these crazy seals on these swords.

After almost an hour of not doing his paperwork Hiruzen had completed the seals and had handed the katanas back to Naruto who had put it on his back again, Naruto had used a seal to hold the katanas in place while they were put on his back rather than the traditional holders.

Thanks to the seal now, the katanas can take a shit load of punishment and not even have the smallest blemish or scratch on it, and the chakra control seal on them will help Naruto to control the chakra that he sends into the blade more effortlessly.

"Jiji I need to ask you something." Naruto said getting really serious, something that doesn't happen so often.

Hiruzen noticed this sudden shift of tone and expression in Naruto and started listening carefully after he gestured Naruto to sit down and continue.

"Jiji, is it, is it true that I…. have the 10 tailed wolf sealed inside of me?" Naruto asked with an anxious expression.

"Naruto, who told you this?" Hiruzen asked with narrowed eyes.

"I heard Mizuki telling this to Iruka-sensei when sensei was protecting me in the woods last night".

Hiruzen snapped his fingers and an anbu appeared next to him, nodded his head and left the room to go ahead and execute Mizuki for breaking the Sandaime's law.

Hiruzen sighed and then nodded his head with his eyes closed answering Naruto's questions. Naruto looked down to his tightly clenched fists that were on his lap with anger and sorrow boiling up inside of him. A small amount of the Juubi's chakra was also leaking out heightening his senses.

He wanted to burst out in rage and scream his thoughts out, but Naruto was better than that. He took a few minutes until his anger subsided a little before asking in a cold and indifferent voice, "Who? When? And why me?".

Suddenly Naruto's eyes shot open as he got off from the chair and looked to the corner on his left and shouted, "WHO ARE YOU? AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?".

Hiruzen whipped his head to his right and shot right up from his chair only to see a silhouette running towards the door, at that moment 3 anbu's appeared from nowhere and pinned the mysterious person down.

"Hokage-sama it's 'root'" one of the anbu said while looking at the man wearing regular anbu clothing with a plain anbu mask with the word 'root' on the forehead.

"Damn you Danzo, I told you to disband them!" Hiruzen said getting royally pissed, "Take him to Ibbiki, he knows what to do with him.", Hiruzen said waving his hands and dismissing the anbu team.

"How did you know Naruto?" Hiruzen asked him after they left. "When I walked in I noticed the presence of 6 people in the room including us but I felt something was wrong because I still felt like there was one more person in the room somewhere. But after the first anbu left I felt that presence even more prominently".

"And then all of a sudden I got a weird smell of a different person from that corner, that was when I understood that there was someone was there but I still wasn't sure, so I went on a limb and took a chance and called out like that, I really didn't expect that person to reveal himself though.", Naruto said kind of proud.

Naruto then looked up at Hiruzen and gave him a look, Hiruzen understood what that look meant and spoke to himself. "*sigh* I knew this day would come but I never expected it would come so soon, maybe it was for the best."

Naruto was confused on why he said something like that but then Hiruzen looked Naruto in the eye and spoke again, "Naruto you should know that I'm not the person who should answer those three questions.".

"Then who!" Naruto asked clearly confused. Hiruzen was the Hokage and he should be the one who knows about this and he should be the one to explain this to him then why is he telling this to him.

Hiruzen slowly walked towards the huge photo of the 4th Hokage and removed it from the wall and turned it around to see a blood seal on the back of it. Naruto by now was extremely confused by now but still kept quiet through the whole scene.

Hiruzen placed the huge photo face down and bit his thumb, smeared his blood on the seal and unsealed it only to reveal 2 scrolls, one yellow and one red. Hiruzen picked it up and put the photo back onto the wall before handing the two scrolls over to Naruto.

"These two scrolls will explain everything you need to know, this was something I planned to give when you became a Chunin but I believe you're more than ready now, once you read them come and meet me tomorrow.", Hiruzen said as Naruto kept looking at the scrolls.

"Promise me Naruto that you will not tell anyone about these scrolls or about the contents in them, unless its someone who deserves to know, or you're strong enough to take care of yourself".

"Mn, I promise" Naruto said as he left the office and walked towards his apartment.

"I hope you find what you're looking for Naruto. But please God don't let Naruto slip away from all of us." Hiruzen said a silent prayer for Naruto so that he can face one of his greatest tribulations up until now.


	14. Chapter 14: Legacy

CHAPTER 14: LEGACY.

**(A/N: sorry guys but this chapter is kind of small but only because I didn't want to bring in other stuff into this mess it up, sorry but the next chapter will be longer than this one. So let's begin.)**

**DESCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE NARUTO UNIVERSE JUST FEW OF THE IMAGINARY CHARACTERS THAT I MAKE UP IN THIS, BUT IF I DID OWN THIS FRANCHISE NARUTO WOULDN'T BE SO THICKHEADDED UNTIL THE END (_).**

After receiving what he wanted from the Hokage's office Naruto left the place and started heading towards his apartment, but on the way his mind was completely on the two scrolls the old man had given him.

Finally, after a walk that seemed like something that would go on forever to Naruto he had reached his apartment. He activated all the seals in the apartment and unsealed the two scrolls from the storage seal within his jacket and placed it in front of him as he sat on the floor.

Naruto looked and looked at the two scrolls for a long time with such amounts of concentration that it looked like he was trying to figure out what was there within the two scrolls without opening it.

After a couple more minutes he finally decides to pick up the red one of the two of them and see what was in it, as soon as he had opened the scroll the first thing that he had noticed were a couple of water drop marks on the paper and came to the conclusion that, the person was crying when they had written this.

Ignoring that he began reading what was written in it and the very first line had made his heart skip a beat and had made it difficult for him to breathe.

**"My loving son Naruto.**

**I'm sorry Naruto but if you're reading this it means that your father and I are no longer there with you in this world. I'm sorry Naruto I really am, I wanted to be there for you all the way through your life but such is fate.**

**My life's slipping away from me as I'm writing this, the Juubi was extracted from my body and its now razing the village to the ground. The Juubi had to be sealed inside of you Naruto, your father and I never really wanted this to happen but you're the last Uzumaki in the village and only you can contain the beast.**

**I would have taken the responsibility but my body is just too weak and I'm slipping away slowly.**

**You look so handsome and cute just like your father, just by looking at you I can tell that you'll be a lady killer just like him when you grow up. I just wish I was there with you ya know, to hear your first words, to see you take your first steps, your favourite food, favourite colour, your graduation, your first love and many more. I'm so sorry Naruto, (tear drops) sorry that your father and I couldn't be there for you when you needed us, and for all the wrongs that the village has done to you, I hope you can forgive us Naruto. And I love you.**

**With so much love that I cannot even express,**

**Your mother, Kushina Uzumaki (The Red Death)."**

By the end of the letter Naruto's lips were quivering and he was using all of his strength to fight back the tears. But a small chuckle escaped his lips as he said "I love you to kaa-chan".

Naruto finally put down the red scroll, picked up the yellow one and opened it.

**"Dear Naruto,**

**I guess that the old monkey finally told you who I am huh? The ten tails is attacking the village right now and the shinobis are failing to hold it back. I'm sorry for what I'm about to do to you Naruto, your mother just had the ten tails extracted from her by the masked man with a single eye, he fled the village before I could completely take care of him and I fear that he might just come back for you again so be careful Naruto he's strong.**

**Your mother is too weak right now and I can feel her slowly slipping away as she doesn't have much time left and you're the only Uzumaki left in the village, the only one who can contain the ten tails. And even if I could find one how can I expect the people of the village to give me their child when I can't even give my own.**

**We're sorry that you have to bear this burden Naruto, but we have faith in you because you're our son, the son of the Fourth Hokage and Clan head of the Uzumaki clan, you are the only one strong enough to carry both your 'Mother's' and 'My' legacy.**

**I am the only son of the 6th clan head of the Namikaze clan and your mother is the only daughter of the 6th clan head of the Uzumaki clan, neither of us inherited our parents position now it's up to you be the next clan head of the two clans, this is your legacy Naruto, your birth right.**

**When you receive your inheritance the council will most probably stand against you so I have blood samples of your mothers and mine sealed in this scroll, with something else, this 'thing' will help you in receiving what is rightfully yours.**

**Your mother's holding you in her arms and crying as I'm writing this and its agonizing to see this, I really am sorry Naruto for never being there when you really needed me for anything all those years, but I want you to know that your mother and I love you, and no matter how many weapons I create or what I do you will always be my greatest creation and the one I love the most.**

**With all my heart and a lot more, I love you Naruto,**

**Your father, Minato Namikaze (Yondaime Hokage)".**

Naruto unsealed the contents in the seal which was in a corner of the scroll while trying his hardest to not let any tears fall. There were two vials of blood, on one of them was a shaggily carved 'M' and a 'K' on the other one, along with those two vials of blood was a framed photograph of Minato and an 8-9 month pregnant Kushina.

Naruto traced his fingers over the photo as the sound of two drops of tears falling from his wet and blurry eyes echoed in the room. He rubbed his eyes with his sleeves and his expression changed into a face that was so determined that it was almost frightening, it looked like the expression of a mad man who would conquer the seas and even battle against the heavens to accomplish what he set out to do.

"Kaa-chan, Tou-chan, I love you guys and I don't blame you for what you did, it was something that had to be done, and I promise you that as the son of the fourth Hokage and the legendary 'Red death', I will set out and finish what you guys wanted to do and I will carry on your legacy with pride and honour till death", Naruto said clenching his fists in front of him.

Naruto stood up with the picture in his hand and stood in front of the medium sized mirror in his room, it was literally the cleanest and most expensive item that he owns, (until his swords came along that is). He stood in front of it and looked at himself and then the photograph in his hands, trying to compare himself with his parents to see how similar he is to them in terms of looks.

Minato had spikey blond hair, cerulean blue eyes and sharp features, Minato was not only the strongest ninja during his time but was also really handsome. And was just like how Kushina described him to be in her letter to Naruto…. 'A lady killer'.

Kushina on the other hand had really straight and silky red hair, a round face, purple eyes and really gentle features, she also had pale white skin complexion and was extremely beautiful and Naruto found her long blood red hair to be really pretty.

Naruto on the other hand had silver hair, which was kind of weird since none of his parents had silver hair, but he had his father's deep azure blue eyes and sharp features of his fathers and had his mother's pale white skin and her straight hair which was a tad bit spiky.

From what Naruto knows Minato was one amongst the most calm, smart, cool, and don't forget strongest Hokage the village has had. "Hmmm, maybe I get my hot headedness from mom" Naruto said aloud to himself while looking at the mirror.

Naruto had a shit eating grin on his face as he looked at the photo in his hands, he was grateful above all things right now, he was grateful now that he had amazing parents that both loved him and the village, they were true shinobis.

And not to brag, but he was also really grateful to his parents for passing down their best genes to him making him quite talented and quite a looker.

He walked away from the mirror to a table and placed his parents' photo on it and knelt down in front the photo, bowed, clasped his hand, said a small prayer for his parents and left his apartment with a huge grin after taking his katanas with him.

A trip to the Hokage's tower to say thanks to the old monkey for answering one of his life's biggest questions. A sigh left his lips as the wind brushed through his hair but this wasn't one that was filled with worry or sorrow, but one with relief, peace of mind and a serenity that was never seen before in him.

\--x AT THE HOKAGE'S OFFICE x--

Naruto knocked on the door and stood there until the words 'come in' was uttered. As he walked in he saw the Hokage was completely surprised that Naruto was already here just over an hour after he had given the scrolls to Naruto.

He was surprised sure, but he kept a calm face as he asked Naruto "so, did you read it?", Naruto just kept quiet and gave him a silent nod, "Did you find the answers you were looking for?", "Yes" was the only answer that Hiruzen had gotten from him.

"So what do you plan on doing now?" he asked with an extremely serious expression, Naruto grinned and answered. "Train…. Train till perfection and live up to their expectations and carry on their will and also my clans' and bring it to glory one day! That is what I plan to do".

"heh" Hiruzen gave Naruto a small smirk as he went through his drawers and pulled out 2 books and walked towards Naruto.

"Are you angry at them?" Hiruzen asked looking into the depths of Naruto's cerulean blue eyes, "No" Naruto answered before continuing "They did what they had to do to save thousands of lives I would have done the same. And I won't blame them because of the idiots that can't distinguish between a kunai, and a kunai sealed in a scroll".

Naruto said all this with a very straight face while looking at the old man eliciting a laugh from the old man followed by Naruto's chuckle with his signature shit eating grin.

"Here" Hiruzen said handing Naruto the two books he had taken from the drawer, "These are the rest of the books that your mother left for you. It took me almost 15 years of practice in fūinnjutsu to reach where I am today, this is the most I can reach right now. But you're different Naruto you read level 6 in just 3 years' time and this is not the farthest that you will go, you were meant for more, far more than this" Hiruzen said leaving a very dumbfounded Naruto.

"But you said you'd give me these once I perfect my 7th book!" Naruto said feeling that something's wrong.

"I know Naruto, that's why I won't be giving these books to you for free…. even though they belong to you." Hiruzen said with the last part in a light grumble.

Naruto understood the basic meaning of those words so without beating around the bush Naruto asked "So what is it that you want me to do?", Hiruzen looked at Naruto with a loving gaze, put his hand on Naruto head and ruffled his hair lightly and said "Take care of Konohamaru for me when I'm gone."

Immediately Naruto's eyes went wide as he looked at the old man as if he was crazy, "H-hey what do you mean when you're gone? Don't joke around like this, I know that you're old but you don't have say things like that right now you know!"

A small tick formed on Hiruzen's head hearing Naruto's words but shrugged it off and continued speaking. "Just promise me Naruto, just promise me that you'll take care of him, you know how he is, a very rebellious one, always talking about becoming Hokage. You know, you're the only one he's ever listened to ever since his parents died, he looks up to you more than anyone in this village, to him you're like his elder brother, and I can have some peace of mind if you could take care of him."

Naruto narrowed his eyes but sighed as he saw that profoundly serene yet troubled look on the old man's face, "I promise I'll take care of him, but you have to answer something, why?"

The answer to that single question is what Naruto needed right now even though he knew that he might not get one.

"Just a foreboding feeling" is all that Naruto got from the old man but that was more than enough for him, he nodded and just after the old man asked him "Don't you have a test tomorrow?", "Huh? How did you know?" Naruto asked clearly surprised to which Hiruzen smugly answered "I'm the Hokage, I know about everything that happens in this village.".

Naruto just smiled while sweat dropping, left the tower and headed for his favourite training ground for some practice with his katanas.

After some practice and a little spar with some of his clones his katana wielding wasn't as strained and weird as before since it was much more longer than the bokkens he used to usually train with.

After training he headed straight to Ichiraku's and after a few bowls of ramen he headed straight for his apartment and took a look at the two fūinnjutsu books he received today. He curbed his urge to open and read the books, steeled his will and told himself that he would get to open and read them in due time, so he put them away and continued learning his 7th book instead. And after a couple of hours of reading and practice he put the book down and went to sleep for tomorrow's test.

**AN: hey guys I'm really sorry for the really late update, I've been really busy with my exams and I've been facing a huge writers block, I offer you my sincere apologies. But, now that Corona's a big thing now and since I'm in quarantine for the next 21 days, updates will be more regular and hopefully I can at least finish 10 chapters. Thanks for following this story of mine and look ahead for the next chapter cuz I feel like I've done a really good job with the fight . Anyway stay safe guys, stay home and don't come out unnecessarily, take lots of protective measures, and let's hope that we don't experience what happens in most post-apocalyptic movies coz there would be no more anything after that including people. So stay safe until next time.**


	15. Chapter 15: Teamwork

**CHAPTER: 15**

**First of all I would like to thank Guest and Mr.Light Yagami for pointing out the pairing mistake that I have made, I've made sure to fix it this time so thanks and hope you all like this chapter.**

Naruto woke up in the morning excited for his test, got ready and was about to eat some instant ramen when he remembered his sensei's words and absolutely in no hells way was he gonna waste some good ramen by eating it now and puking it out later.

So he just picked up his 7th book on sealing and strapped his katanas on his back in an 'X' shape and left home…. really hungry.

\--X Training ground 7 X--

Naruto reached the training ground with his stomach grumbling and disagreeing with his decision.

He looked around only to find out that he was the only one over there, so he went ahead and sat cross legged under a tree that was there at the side of the training ground and put his katanas on his lap and pulled out his book and begun reading.

Around 15 minutes later a grumpy Sasuke and an unusually cheerful Sakura made their way into the ground to find Naruto seated beneath the tree and…. Reading!

It was surprising for them to find Naruto reading something because all he did most of the time in class was sleep and get scolded by Iruka not once in all their years of being in the same class as him did they find him reading something.

"what is going on?" Sakura asked extremely puzzled as they walked towards Naruto.

"Oh hey, good morning Sakura! Morning duck butt!" Naruto greeted grinning at Sasuke causing his eyebrows to twitch but gladly returned the insult, "Morning silver-balls" he greeted with a smirk making it Naruto's eyebrows turn to twitch at the greet.

Seeing the tension between her teammates Sakura chimed in "Good morning Naruto, by the way what's that you're reading?" she asked pointing at the book in his hands.

"Oh this? It's just a book on sealing." Naruto unenthusiastically answered. Sakura was clearly surprised while Sasuke's eyebrows quirked up in clear interest.

"Naruto, since when did you start learning fūinnjutsu?" Sakura asked with her eyes gleaming. Naruto felt kind of proud seeing Sakura's shining eyes and he answered, "Well, I took an interest into fūinnjutsu at the age of 9 when I found out that my clan was known for their prowess in fūinnjutsu and decided to follow in their footsteps."

"You belong to a clan dobe?" Sasuke asked amazed, "Yeah, to the Uzumaki clan of Uzushiogakure", 'And to the Namikaze clan of Konoha' Naruto said and thought the last part to himself.

By this time Sasuke was clearly amazed and a whole new level of respect was formed for the boy since he had decided to follow in his clan's footsteps just like himself.

"So how good are you with seals right now Naruto??" Sakura asked curious about how good he is,

"Well, I'm a level 6 intermediate seal mater right now even though I haven't taken up the assessment since it was way too expensive for me, so officially my skills don't exist in the village but unofficially this makes me the 3rd best sealing specialist in the village coming right below the Hokage who is a level 8 advanced seal master". Naruto said with a bit of pride in his voice.

Of course he had the rights to be prideful because according to Hiruzen Naruto is probably the youngest seal master in the 5 great nations and is the youngest and most efficient seal master in the village under Hiruzen.

"WHAT??" Sakura exclaimed loudly taken aback by his answer. When she had asked him that question she expected him to say something of the lines 'oh I just started 3 years ago so I've not come that far I'm only at the 2nd level', to her even reach in 2nd level was an extreme strech.

Never did she expect her teammate to be so capable and monstrous. "Naruto you're just pulling our legs right?" Sakura asked once again just to be sure, Naruto just sweat dropped at that question and thought to himself 'Shit! I said too much, oh what the hell'.

"Hehehe, Naruto just giggled with his arms across his chest as looked at Sakura straight in her eyes and said… "No".

Finally, Sakura sighed and came in terms with this piece of news. She thought she was impressive amongst her peers in the academy but only right now did she understand how highly she thought of herself. Indeed, one can't compare themselves with monsters like Naruto and Sasuke, it was at this moment that she felt like she should strive to become stronger.

When she was still downcast she suddenly remembered something and asked Naruto, "hey, you said you are the third best and the Hokage is the second then who is the best?"

"That, well you can say that the highest ranks achievable for a fūinnjutsu specialist was the grandmaster rank but so far there has only been 6 grandmasters until today"

"Who were they?" Sakura asked getting really interested in this topic.

" They were the previous 6 clan heads of the Uzumaki clan, it is said that to become the clan head they are required to reach the level of grandmasters".

"But in our village the highest achieved rank was level 10 and only four people had made it to those ranks, they were Mito Uzumaki (wife of the first Hokage), the Second Hokage, the Fourth Hokage and the Toad sage Jiraya one of the three legendary sages."

"But among these four, Mito-san, the Second and the Fourth Hokage are already dead, leaving only Jiraya-sama as the last level 10 grand master of this village but word is that he's rarely in the village unless it's something that requires his attention, and currently he isn't in the village."

"Ohhhhh! Wait, doesn't that make you the second best fūinnjutsu specialist in the village currently?" Sakura had a sudden realization and looked at Naruto like he was a creepy, scary uncle that had popped out of nowhere.

Naruto just showed his signature shit eating grin to Sakura and said nothing, this just aggravated Sakura like nothing else to a whole new extent almost causing her to punch the silver haired boy in the head for rubbing it in her face.

"I never said that now did I?" Naruto asked her in reply to her question.

Truth be told there were a total of 5 level 10 sealing masters in the village and Kushina was one amongst them, but the only reason he skipped that small part was because of his promise to Hiruzen.

He had promised that he wouldn't tell anyone who his parents were, and telling his mom's name here might pique his friends' curiosity since they were both were named 'Uzumaki', even though there was only a small chance of that happening, he wasn't willing to risk it, since it might be fairly easy for them to dig up his history.

While Sakura was still a little pissed Naruto noticed that Sasuke was far too quiet throughout the whole ordeal and looked at him only to find his eyes focused on something on his lap.

While Naruto was looking at the black haired teen Sakura saw Naruto's gaze and looked at Sasuke and she noticed his gaze locked on a particular item on Naruto's lap.

At first it took Sakura a few seconds to come to her senses and take a proper look at the two sticks on Naruto's lap and that was when she noticed that those weren't sticks but real katanas.

She was astonished because katanas weren't cheap in any way, even the cheapest katana in the village would cost more than 2000 Ryo, but the ones on Naruto's lap seems to be really expensive and above all there were two of them.

"Hey Naruto, can I take a look at them?" contrary to his expectations Sasuke was the first one to pop the question.

"Sure, here" Naruto told Sasuke as he stood up and handed him pain, the silver bladed sword which he carefully took into his hands and very slowly unsheathed the sword causing a glaring shine to be emitted out of the blade.

Once it was fully unsheathed both Sasuke and Sakura were astonished by the blades design and looks.

The blade looked so simple yet they had not seen a more elegant blade, even though Sakura had seen only 2 maybe 3 katanas so far this was easily the best one amongst them.

And when it came to Sasuke he had seen many katanas before in his clan especially his brother's and Shisui's and whenever he went out to buy new tools for his training, and even he had to admit this was undoubtedly the best one in quality. The only other katana he could find of a better quality was his clan's heirloom which is passed down to the clan head of every generation. It used to belong to his father before and now when he becomes of age it would become his.

The katana looked like a mix between a ninjato and a katana, with a ninjato's straight blade and a katana's aesthetics and style, the dragon carvings and the name on the blade made it look and sound seriously cool and that slight red glow on the surface of the blade made it look far more menacing than it should have.

Both Sasuke and Sakura was mesmerised by the sword for a while and then Sasuke looked at Naruto and then at the other katana in his hand and following him Sakura did the same.

Looking at Sasuke and Sakura's action Naruto lightly chuckled and held the black handle of the sword in his right hand knowing that they wanted him to show them this sword also.

As he held the handle of the sword his expression visibly changed from one that was aloof and childish to one that held a lot of focus and seriousness in his eyes.

Seeing the change in his expression Sasuke and Sakura was astonished, Sakura for seeing Naruto look so serious for the first time while Sasuke was astonished for seeing the same expression that his brother and Shisui used to have every time they took their stance with their katana while they trained.

Naruto took in a deep breath, gripped his katana tighter and quickly pulled the blade out of its sheath twirled it in his hand while it was above his head and swiped the katana down next to him all in one lightning smooth motion as if it was practiced by him a 1000 times.

The whole motion was so quick and smooth that the 'shing' sound made by the katana when it was unsheathed was extremely pleasing to the ears and it looked like a dance.

If he was to admit it Naruto would say that he spent most of his training yesterday doing this, sheathing and all the other basic, and few intermediate stances a thousand times till he was perfect with it, this was what caused his motions to be so smooth even though the katana was bigger than it was supposed to be for his stature.

Naruto slowly brought the katana up to his chest and handed it to Sakura so that she could see it more clearly.

The full black blade and handle with the small white diamond shapes in it made it look so cool along with the dragons and the red glint on the blade.

Sasuke and Sakura went through the katanas in their hands, exchanged, went through them and exchanged them again and went through them again.

Sakura finally after 2 minutes of a thorough glance returned the black blade back into his hands who then gracefully sheathed the katana the way it's supposed to.

Sasuke on the other hand did a few smooth stances with the katana and sheathed the white katana on his own in the same graceful way that Naruto did, at first Naruto was surprised with Sasuke's movements but that surprised vanished when he remembered that Itachi was Sasuke's brother and the anbu must have taught the duckbutt how to handle a sword since Itachi himself was a sword master.

Silence descended on the ground not a silence of awkwardness but rather a silence of contemplation as everyone thought of something.

Around half a minute later Sasuke finally voiced his thoughts, "Hey dobe, where did you find these and Who made these?

"Oh these were made in the 'The Greatest Shinobi Store' and as for who made these…. You're looking at the creator himself" Naruto said smiling like a madman, thinking about how his 'prized possessions' made his teammates dumbfounded."

Sasuke's and Sakura's eyes were wide open especially Sasuke's whose eyes looked at the white katana in his hands.

"You mean…. You forged these?" Sakura asked and Naruto nodded answering her question.

Seeing that his teammates required an explanation he stared explaining how he met Takeshi-san and how the old man ended up taking him as his apprentice and slowly taught him everything including forging all in three years…. Again, and how he forged these as his last project which took him a total of 3 months.

On hindsight, him being able to master even forging in three years might be due to his father's Namikaze bloodline in his body.

His friends were shocked to say the least but just like how they accepted that he became a level 6 fūinnjutsu specialist in 3 years, they accepted this too, albeit a little unwilling, but what can they do about it? Reality was right before their eyes, because other than him being able to create these katanas Naruto had absolutely no way of affording such expensive swords.

"Hey Naruto, show me some katas" Sasuke said as he stretched out his hand and handed Naruto his other katana.

Naruto just looked at Sasuke nodded and took his sword back and put them on top of the seal on his back which helped him hold his katanas in place in an 'X' symbol without a holder.

Naruto and Sasuke mover a little further ahead and Naruto pulled out his swords and took his stance and started his dual sword katas making him move and twirl around the field as if he was dancing mesmerising Sasuke and Sakura as they watched him.

And the next 20 minutes was spent like this and for the next 2 hours all they did was wait, wait and wait! Naruto spent those two hours reading his book, Sasuke spent his time sitting with his eyes closed under the tree along with Naruto, while Sakura was the most frustrated and annoyed one.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity a one eyed masked man landed in front the three and said a simple "Yo!" startling Sakura while Naruto and Sasuke showed no reactions other than looking at the man with a disinterested look.

"What the hell sensei? We've been here for almost 3 hours!" Sakura complained. "Sorry, a black cat crossed my path today so I had to take a long route." Kakashi answered sheepishly.

Hearing this explanation all three genins sweat dropped while looking at him with an unbelievable expression.

"OK! Let's begin your test" said Kakashi as he brought out 2 bells and tied them on his pant. "Your objective is to get these two bells from me those who gets them from me will pass, there is only a 66% pass rate for this test." Kakashi said with a smile on his face like its nothing.

"But sensei, there's only 2 bells but there are 3 of us!" Sakura said indirectly asking a question which went along the lines 'Does that mean only 2 of the three of us will pass?'.

"Glad you asked Sakura! Yes, there's only 2 bells and there are 3 of you which means that only 2 of the three of you will pass this test, that is why there is only a 66% pass rate for this test." Kakashi said making everyone alert.

He summoned an alarm clock from a seal and placed it on the ground as he said "You have time until noon to get these bells from me. Oh, and one more thing, if want to get the bells come at me with an intent to kill! Now, BEGIN!!" Kakashi exclaimed loudly making all three of them jump in different directions and hide themselves.

'Hmmm, good they know the basics.' Kakashi thought to himself before he saw Sasuke lunge at him from one of the bushes to catch him off guard. 'Out of patience this soon huh?' Kakashi thought as he turned to face Sasuke.

As Sasuke reached Kakashi he skilfully started by a few sharp punches and mixed in a few kicks with it, Kakashi back stepped, dogged and blocked most of those punches.

Sasuke finally gave in to the pressure and ended up throwing a really wide right cross which Kakashi caught with his left hand, Sasuke then tried to kick Kakashi in his temple with his left leg which Kakashi ended up catching with his right hand.

While Kakashi was distracted for a second and had none of his hands free at the moment, Sasuke stretched out his left hand in an instant and tried to grab a bell.

Kakashi saw this and at the last moment and he let go of Sasuke and jumped back a few steps.

Sasuke sneered as he thought 'So close, just a bit more.' With that thought Sasuke went through 6 hand seals and said "Fire style: Fire ball jutsu!" covering his mouth Sasuke blew out a medium sized fire ball.

Kakashi was kind of surprised at the jutsu, but then thinking about his background nothing seemed surprising anymore, Kakashi just stood there and didn't move an inch, the fireball covered Kakashi and he disappeared into it.

From Sasuke's point of view he felt like he had hit Kakashi square on but something in him told otherwise, 'I didn't see any wood splintering' Sasuke thought to himself and before he could mull over the matter two hands shot up from the ground and grabbed on to Sasuke's ankles and pulled him into the ground all the way up to his neck leaving only his head sticking out of the ground.

"Earth style: Head hunter jutsu!" Kakashi said as he crawled out of the ground, freaking Sasuke out a little.

Just before Kakashi could pull himself out of the ground completely, Naruto charged at him from nowhere at high speeds and threw a kick to Kakashi's ribs, but too bad for Naruto Kakashi used his elbow to block Naruto's kick causing Naruto to very slightly wince at the pain, just as Naruto was about to pull his leg back Kakashi completely climbed out of the ground and grabbed a hold of Naruto's ankle and flung him to the other side like a rag doll making him land on his butt and roll on the ground for a few feet before he came to a stop and stood up.

"Alright Kakashi-sensei, if you can me alone, how about 15 of me?" Naruto said as he put his fingers in a cross shape before saying "Multi shadow clone jutsu!", a smoke screen appeared in a 6-meter radius around Naruto which dispersed in a couple of seconds to reveal 15 Naruto clones.

'Shadow clones? How is he able to do this Jounin level jutsu? And in such numbers?' Kakashi thought, even though it wasn't seen on his face Kakashi was really surprised, but what surprised him even more was that all the clones slowly pulled out the katanas from their backs.

Without a second's hesitation all the clones lunged towards Kakashi, Kakashi in a fit of panic pulled out a kunai which was absolutely useless in this battle because he found out that even though his kenjutsu skills was good there were too many holes in his form.

Unbeknownst to Kakashi another Naruto jumped out from one of the bushes and ran towards Sasuke to pull him out of the ground, and not wanting to waste time Naruto slapped (**yeah that's right, he slapped his stupid face XD**) an anti-gravitational seal onto his face pulled him out of there and dragged him into the bushes next to Sakura as if he weighed nothing (And that was thanks to the seal!).

In the middle of this escapade Kakashi kept dodged, blocked, parried and countered the onslaught of clones.

"Thanks dobe" Sasuke said to Naruto as the got over the feeling of being afloat in the air.

"Alright guys let's face it, were no match for him, probably even hundreds of us won't be a match for him, that is if we keep working alone." Naruto said looking at Sasuke and Sakura while hinting his intention.

"As much as I'd like to disagree with the idiot, he's got a point here, we're going to have to work together to get those bells" Sasuke said while seriously looking at Kakashi who had already taken out 5 clones.

"But there are only 2 bells instead of three, so what do we do about that?" Sakura voiced her worries.

"I'm not sure" Naruto said narrowing his eyes at the sight of Kakashi taking out another two of his clones.

"Ninjas as long as they are on service are made into a three-man cell, Jounin or not, then why?" Sasuke popped a random thought that crossed his mind.

"Unless" Naruto said and all three of them looked at each other and had a sudden realization which was right in front of them all this while.

"Teamwork!" the three of them said at the same time.

It was pretty obvious, teamwork is always required for a team to function efficiently, especially if you're a ninja, because every time you go on a mission your life is in the hands of your team mates, and if there is no bond or a foundation of trust amongst the members, that team is bound to fall and perish even in the simplest mission.

"How about it Sasuke care to work along with me?" Naruto asked jokingly

"Do I have another option dobe?" Sasuke gave out a helpless reply, but on his face was a grin.

"How about it Sakura care to join us?" Naruto asked Sakura, who just simply nodded in reply.

"Alright I have a plan!" Naruto said getting the two's attention before drawing out the plan on the ground, Sasuke and Sakura pointed out most of the potential flaws in the plan fixing it and perfecting it in the process.

The three coordinated perfectly like a team that has been together for a long time before nodding and heading to execute their plan.

Naruto pulled out a seal tag which he had prepare the night before and handed it to Sakura instructing her how to use it.

Even though it took me so long to explain all this, all these took place in just 2 minutes including formulating the plan.

It took Kakashi only 2mins to clear out all 15 clones, and he had noticed that Sasuke was missing from the moment that the battle started, but as for how Sasuke got out he had no idea.

"The shadow clones were just a distraction, well done Naruto!" Kakashi said as he turned around to see Sasuke right in front him with his hand cocked back in an attempt to punch Kakashi.

Kakashi was totally unfazed when he saw Sasuke as if it was within his expectations, Kakashi tilted his head just a little to the side to let Sasuke's fist go past him, and just kneed Sasuke in his guts knocking the air out of him.

Kakashi brought his leg down only to see that Sasuke had caught hold of his leg and threw a kunai next to his other leg.

The kunai poofed into smoke only to reveal a Naruto that had grabbed onto his other leg, just as he thought that was it another three Naruto clones appeared out of nowhere and grabbed onto his arms and neck.

Kakashi was pinned as all the clones were equipped with weight seals causing his body to become really, at that very instance Kakashi saw another clone run out from one of the bushes and try to go for the bells.

Kakashi's eyes widened a bit as the clone approached the bell, and at the very last second a very small amount of lightning chakra surged out of his body causing all the clone grabbing onto him to dissipate into a small cloud of smoke and the real Naruto and Sasuke that was holding onto his legs to let go.

Kakashi kicked the two genins on the ground sending them a few feet back and spin kicked the clone that tried to grab the bells in the face dispelling it.

"Fire style: Fire ball jutsu!" Sasuke said just as Kakashi kicked the clone sending in a medium sized fireball towards him.

Naruto on the other hand threw a wind seal into the fireball causing the fireball to grow and become a pretty big fireball.

The fireball went through Kakashi but all they saw was wood being splintered, Kakashi appeared a few meters towards the right of the fireball with a smile on his face as he said "You're going to have to do better than-".

Just before he could finish his sentence Kakashi felt like something had slammed into his guts causing him to gasp a little, he took a step back only to feel a 'whoosh' before him, Kakashi stretched out his arm and caught hold the thing that went past him and it felt like a skinny arm.

Sakura appeared out of nowhere right in front of him with her wrist in his hand, Sakura swung her other fist which also ended up being caught by Kakashi. 'Invisibility?' Kakashi thought before Sasuke interrupted him.

Sasuke appeared out of nowhere and jumped with his heel at his shoulder level in an attempt to axe kick Kakashi on the head.

Kakashi ducked and front stepped a little placing him in front of Sasuke whom he then donkey kicked on his butt sending him flying a few feet.

Just as Kakashi's one leg was still in the air Naruto came in and tried to sweep kick Kakashi, only to see that Kakashi had jumped and avoided that kick, but to his surprise Sakura with all her strength shoulder pushed Kakashi while he was still in the air causing him to let go of her and land a couple of feet in front of them.

Naruto all of a sudden drew out both of his katanas and threw 'pain' towards Kakashi.

Kakashi thought Naruto had thrown it at him to make him move but what he didn't expect was that the katana completely missed him and flew right past him "SASUKE!" Naruto said loudly while he grabbed 'misery' with both his hands and ran towards Kakashi.

When Naruto called out Sasuke's name Kakashi looked behind him to see that Sasuke had caught the handle of the katana while it was still in mid-air and ran towards him, Kakashi tried to move forward only to see Sakura with a kunai pointed towards his chest.

Before he could move another way both Naruto and Sasuke appeared from his front and back respectively with the katana's on his neck officially cutting off all of Kakashi's escape routes.

"is this better"? Naruto asked as Sakura's hand moved to grab hold of the bells, but before her hands could reach them Kakashi was replaced with a wooden log as he appeared a few meters away.

'clap' 'clap' 'clap' 'clap', Kakashi clapped as he said "Well done! But you still haven't gotten the bells. It's okay on the account that you've worked together so well I'll let you try again after lunch. " Kakashi said with an eye smile.

"Well… that won't be necessary sensei" Sakura said as she held two bells in her left hand, lifted it up and shook it in her hand causing it to ring with a nice mellow sound.

Sasuke who was standing in the centre with Naruto on his left and Sakura on his right lifted both his fists towards the two which both Naruto and Sakura returned the gesture by giving him a fist bump together with a smirk on Sasuke's face and a grin on Naruto's and Sakura's face.

Kakashi with a surprised expression looked at his waist only to see the two bells which was there slowly dissipate into nothingness like it was an illusion.

"Illusion?" Kakashi slowly muttered to himself which the other three heard and begun to explain.

Sakura started off by saying "It's basically impossible for me to do two genjutsus at the same time, and that's where Naruto came into play, he provided me with a seal that would let me turn invisible for a very short time."

As soon as Sakura stopped Naruto begun "The whole thing was a front from the moment you took out all my clones, it was all just to find enough time to get Sakura into position, and as for when she snatched the bells it was when we shot that huge fire ball at you."

"The moment Sasuke started weaving hand seals Sakura made a dash for the bells from among the bushes she reached out, grabbed the bells and put up the genjutsu right before the moment you substituted and she substituted along with you helping us cover up that small act easily."

Kakashi looked at Sakura and found out that a small part from the edge of her clothes had been singed due to the flames. This was a risky job for Sakura, had she slipped anywhere in between she might have been seriously injured.

That was the reason she was given the job, not because it was risky but because she was the only one among them who could time that perfectly.

"We knew we couldn't beat you one on one so we planned this out instead jumping in like headless chickens." Sasuke said like none of this mattered at all.

"And as for the end where we pinned you down, was all just done in the moment!" Naruto added.

"Then why did Sakura reach for the bells when you three had me pinned even though she already got the bells?" Kakashi asked a question which caused Sakura to get flustered a little.

"I…. I forgot that I had taken the bells from you previously." Sakura said while holding her head down while her inner Sakura within her screamed "YOU IDIOT!!!".

"Good…. But right now the main question is, which one of you is going to fail and return back to the academy?" Kakashi asked getting serious.

Sasuke slowly took the bells from Sakura's hand and threw it to Kakashi who caught it with a look of surprise.

"If passing this test requires one of us to fail then the three of us might as well fail together and attend the academy again for another year." Sasuke said with an annoyed but firm look which held no room for any further argument.

Kakashi looked at the other two and saw the same expressions on their face which showed that all of them were serious, it became awfully silent for a few seconds before Naruto spoke up, "Well, even though I don't really like duck butt over here, I like this team, and I'd rather not get placed in another team."

"It looks like we finally agree on something Dobe!" Sasuke said with his arms crossed and his eyes closed while he had a small smile on his face.

"Besides we are a team and we stick up for each other and stay together right?" Sakura asked as she moved and stood in-between Naruto and Sasuke.

"POOF!"

All of a sudden the Kakashi in front of them burst into smokes revealing that it was a clone as a voice came from behind them.

"Well done, all of you pass!" said the real Kakashi as he stood behind them.

"You knew all along didn't you?" Naruto asked Kakashi hinting whether he knew about their plan but ended up getting nothing but a smile from him as he began speaking, "Well now that you've passed, Team7 will be on official duty starting from tomorrow morning and meet me here at the same time as today!"

"Is that at 7:00 or at 10:00?" Naruto asked causing Kakashi to sweat drop. "7:00 Naruto, you can disperse" Kakashi said as he shushinned out of the place.

Sasuke handed Naruto his katana back and all three of them left the ground in a fairly good mood, with all three of them possibly visiting a small restaurant (other than Ichiraku's i.e.) for lunch.

\--X Meanwhile at the Hokage's office! X--

"Team1- Team-6, failed"

"Team8, Pass" Kurenai who was in charge of team8 spoke.

"Team10, Pass" Asuma the teacher in charge of team10 spoke with a proud tone.

"Team7…. Pass" Kakashi said shocking everyone in the room including the Hokage himself.

"Oh that's a first Kakashi! You have not passed a single team given to you so far all these years, what made you change your mind?" Hiruzen asked as he looked at Kakashi while holding onto Team7's member's application form.

"They met my standards perfectly!" Kakashi said shocking everyone…. Again!

"Well here's a first time for everything" Asuma said as he chuckled.

"Yeah, but still I wonder what's so special about these kids?" Kurenai said as she looked at the application form in the Hokage's hands.

"Well then I look forward to their performances!" Hiruzen said as he approved their applications and ended the meeting.


End file.
